


Runs In The Family

by Anonysquirrel (chibirisuchan)



Series: Runs in the Family [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: ALL THE FLUFF, Alex Pulls Pigtails, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Charles Bakes All the Things, Charles Is a Darling, Erik Looks Good in Wet Black Leather, Erik is Overprotective Of Course, Language, M/M, Mpreg, Occasional violence, References to past trauma, Scones, Tea, angst is a given, because this is an X-Men fanfic, fluff is a bonus, much more fluff than angst though, of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:32:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibirisuchan/pseuds/Anonysquirrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex knew his own reputation. Hell, he'd started some of his own reputation, because it kept some of the smarter thugs off his back. Everyone knew Alex's reputation. There was no way Hank didn't know his reputation, but he'd brought Alex into a house with some really expensive things and a lot of innocent little kids and his too-friendly, too-harmless dad. </p>
<p>But clearly Hank hadn't told his family anything about Alex, just like he hadn't told Alex anything about his family. At least, not about the brain-breaking parts of his family. </p>
<p>"I didn't know where to start," Hank said, for the dozenth time.</p>
<p>Featuring mpreg!Charles in a Kiss The Cook apron, overprotective!Erik in wet black leather, and baked goods. Lots and lots of baked goods. </p>
<p>(Another segment of this series is posted under the Cookie Cutter fic collection - thanks again, Takmarierah!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Alex meets the family

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second fill for the kinkmeme prompt at http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/2439.html?thread=3364999#t3364999. The mental image of mpreg!Charles in a Kiss the Cook apron with a tableful of all the mutant kids drinking tea and eating scones went and beat up my common sense. 
> 
> Over 100 pages of sporadic rambling over the past couple years later, I'm still occasionally doodling on it, so I thought I'd start archiving it here and hope to find time to finish another segment soon.
> 
> This is the first time I've posted anything to AO3 and I've heard getting the formatting right can be tricky, so I may be a bit slow with the conversion process if it needs a different format than LJ did.
> 
> (Quick note on scale: Charles' actor is 5'7". The rest of the boys and men in the cast are at least 5'11" or 6", i.e. around half a foot taller than Charles. Hank's actor is 6'3", i.e. about 9 inches taller than Charles. If Charles' descriptions make him sound shorter than the others, that's straight out of central casting; the 'shorter uke' fandom trope is unexpectedly canonical here.)

_It just figures,_ Alex thought sourly, watching the rain pelt down across the windshield of Hank's car. _Six months trying to chat the guy up, and he only actually notices when it's a crisis? Fuck my life._

Hank's knuckles were too white on the steering wheel, and he was chattering more than Alex had ever heard him before. Even more than when he'd gotten that xenobiowhateverthefuck article published in that science geek magazine. 

"It's going to be okay. I swear it's going to be okay. I'm not going to let it not be okay, Alex, you're going to be fine--" 

"I know that, bozo," Alex said with a sigh, resisting the urge to beat his head against the window. His eighth set of foster parents had just gotten a demonstration of why nobody wanted to keep mutant kids no matter how lucrative the insurance repair and replacement policies were when one of them blew his stack. "Back to the courthouse, roll the dice, see who gets me dumped on them next, I've danced this dance before."

"--You shouldn't _have_ to. My parents are great, and I _know_ we've got room for you, and -- my little brothers and sisters are a handful, but they're not bad kids, they're just excitable, and -- anyway, it's going to be all right. Papa knows how the foster care system works, he's probably on speed dial for every case worker in the county, I'm _not_ letting them send you back to -- anyway -- you'll be fine, I swear. I won't let it not be fine--"

"I'm not the one freaking out here," Alex pointed out idly. "Seriously, take me back to the courthouse, okay? I was just -- I was pissed Jack and Judy just dumped all my books and shit out in the rain. I shouldn't even have called, this isn't your problem--"

"Of course it's my problem!" Hank burst out. "You're my _friend_."

Alex tried not to wince too visibly. _His friend. Just his friend. Yeah. Because the chocolates were just a sadistic prank from the badass jock who couldn't seriously mean he was actually interested in the science nerd. Fuck my fucking life._

He did thump his head against the glass a couple times, experimentally. It didn't really help.

All of a sudden the rain stopped; Alex looked up at the ornate horse-drawn-carriage-parking-lot-something-or-other Hank had stopped the car beneath, then looked at the _rest_ of the goddamn unbelievable castle attached to the horse-parking-whateverthefuckitwas, and his jaw must have been hanging open or something because Hank gave a far too nervous gulp and a self-conscious ruffle of fingers through his drenched and dripping brown mop of hair.

"It's going to be okay," Hank said, for the thousandth time, and grabbed one of the soaked cardboard boxes out of the back seat before taking the steps three at a time and unlocking the side door. 

In something of a daze, Alex helped Hank schlep his four boxes of wet books and one rain-soaked duffel bag into the marble-floored hallway. He couldn't really get any wetter, but he didn't want to let go of the box of comic books; they were all he had left from his dad, and -- they were probably ruined anyway, but he couldn't let them go, and Hank had him by the elbow. 

As long as Hank knew where to go in this overgrown maze of a building on steroids, Alex didn't need to think, didn't need to spare the energy to keep track of how many places they twisted and turned, and it was a damn good thing nobody was going to come up with the pop quiz because he would've bombed so badly it was pathetic, but he was so far past overwhelmed it wasn't even funny anymore. 

And this damn house was way the hell too big; all the corridors looked alike, everything was dripping with dark wood and marble floors and oh hey something smelled fucking _amazing._

The kitchen alone was probably bigger than Jack and Judy's whole house, and it was _swarming_ with teenagers and kids. A man by the stove gave a startled yelp.

"Hank! You couldn't have _warned_ me your young man was coming to visit? I look a fright -- oh. _Oh._ Well, never mind then." He turned away from the stove, revealing a bright red apron emblazoned with glittering lips and _Kiss the Cook_ , straining over a startling potbelly at odds with his slender face and the flour-dusted hands he scrubbed on the apron before offering a handshake and a bewilderingly sweet smile.

"I'm Hank's papa, Charles, and you're both absolutely soaked, aren't you? Good heavens. Sean, run and fetch some dry clothes for Alex and your brother, will you? Angel, are the towels in the dryer done yet? They'd be warmest. And it's a good thing I can't survive without the kettle on. Tea or chocolate, Alex? Because I refuse to let coffee pass the lips of any poor soul in need of comfort."

"...What?" Alex croaked. 

Charles' handshake was just as bafflingly warm and welcoming as his smile, for all that Alex didn't even remember putting out his hand. His brain was throwing him the blue screen of death.

"Tea, then, because I shall not surrender the last vestiges of civilization without a fight!" Charles proclaimed. "Hank, be a dear and reach us down the mugs?"

Hank had no problem reaching the mugs on the top shelf; Alex noticed with a start that Charles barely came up to his son's shoulder. His personality sure as hell took up more space than the rest of him did.

The girl called Angel lobbed a pair of towels at them from the laundry room across the hall, then headed back to chopping vegetables on the kitchen table. Three kids of three different races were perched on the chairs around her, fistfuls of crayons decorating paper (and sometimes the wood beside it). A fourth kid went careening through the kitchen and out into the hallway shrieking happily at the top of his lungs. Sean the clothes-fetcher, a lanky ginger-haired teen, nearly tripped over the shrieking kid, but he somehow managed to drop the clothes-bundles onto the countertops rather than the floor.

The next shriek came from the teakettle; Charles wrapped the end of a towel around his hand and reached up, but Hank was taller and faster, plucking the kettle off the burner and setting it on a trivet. 

"Careful, Papa. It's heavy."

"Well, of course it is. It wouldn't be a proper kettle without the thermodynamic properties of cast iron; you need all that mass to raise the thermal capacity to--"

Okay, _now_ Alex saw where Hank got the hardcore geekery from, at least. He'd been wondering how such an aggressively friendly (and _short_ ) extrovert could have produced a huge gangly giant of a kid as painfully shy and shame-wracked as Hank. 

Clearly Hank had gotten the nerd gene from Charles, even if nothing else. Alex wondered what Hank's mother was like.

The pair of them went at it like a disturbingly synchronized ping-pong match, arguing polyatomic molecules and layered forging and impurities in alloys and the applications of quantum mechanics to the process of brewing the perfect cup of tea. All the while, Hank swirled hot water around a pair of ceramic teapots and poured it out; the moment he set each pot down, Charles spooned tea into it, followed by Hank smoothly filling each pot from the kettle, Charles popping on the lids and wrapping each in a kitchen towel, Hank reaching over his head to set the timer without even having to stretch.

This was Hank and his dad. His _own_ dad. This was what _family_ looked like. They'd been around each other long enough to do things like this, back and forth without even missing a beat. They had fucking family _traditions_ around particle theory in quantum physics with ridiculous flowery teapots with chips in the handles. Alex swallowed a bitter lump of envy that was stuck in his throat.

"Now both of you go dry off and get changed," Charles told them as he untied the apron. Underneath it, he was wearing a tattered old college sweatshirt that was distinctly too large for him in every way but one. The cuffs of the sleeves were threatening to eat his hands, and he shoved the extra fabric back up to his elbows determinedly, then leaned back against the counter with a sigh.

The shift in his posture made his incongruous belly look even bigger, and Alex tried hard not to stare. Alex took great pride in being an unrepentant asshole, but he refused to be an asshole by _accident,_ and this was Hank's _family_.

"Leave your shoes over the heating vents in the bathroom; they'll dry better. Angel, you've got things sorted here? Right, then. Hot showers and dry clothes, both of you, and I shall attempt to remedy my own dreadful state of dishabille." 

"You look fine, Papa," Hank said softly, gathering up the clothes Sean had brought for them. "Are you sure you shouldn't wait for Father..."

\--hold the fuck up, _Papa and Father_? So there was no fucking way Hank could be _that_ oblivious to the fact that Alex was trying his damnedest to flirt with him, and _that_ meant-- what the hell _did_ that mean?

But Charles had clapped his hands together briskly, putting on what had to be his best attempt at a stern expression. (He really wasn't very good at it. But Alex had to give him half a point for effort anyhow. ...Maybe a quarter point. He was pretty sure he'd seen pissed-off baby kittens that were meaner-looking than Charles, because at least the baby kittens had claws.) 

"Dry clothes, I said! Both of you, hop to." He even wagged a finger up at Hank. (A long way up.) 

Hank had to be most of a foot taller than his dad, but it was like watching a terrier puppy chewing on a great dane or something; the bigger guy never even thought about fighting back. "Yes, Papa," Hank said meekly, and picked up their bundles of borrowed clothes. 

* * *

Even the bathrooms in this place were over the top, and big enough for the whole basketball team. Hank slunk into one of the shower stalls, shoes and all, to avoid having to strip in front of the badass jock. 

Alex bit back the urge to beat his head against the ridiculously ornate wall, because with his luck his thick head would break something that cost more than he made in a year at the Burger and Suds. He stripped down and scrubbed himself with some ridiculously froofy shower sponge -- at least the water was nice and hot.

Hank's dad might be a barking mad British nutjob with all the self-restrained and chilly reserve of a pack of excitement-crazed puppies, but he'd been dead to rights about the wonders of warm towels. And dry warm socks felt abso-fucking-lutely _amazing_. 

The marble floors were slippery under his bare socks, but like hell was Alex going to put those wet shoes back on. 

And Hank's feet looked even bigger out of his shoes. Enormous. Alex grinned, thinking smugly about what they said about men with big feet, as he followed Hank back through the maze to the kitchen.

When they got back to the kitchen, the rest of the kids had mostly settled around the table, though the little howler was still running laps around the table and making sounds at pitches better suited to dolphins or bats or something. 

The two little girls were trying to be much more dignified than the howler, each of them holding a flowery teacup with gold-traced rims and sipping very carefully; they looked like an ebony and ivory pair of bookends, both of them with bright blue eyes. The little Indian boy next to them was much more interested in his gingerbread cookies than his tea. Alex couldn't blame him for that; the cookies looked -- and smelled -- like they were still warm.

A tall black teenager had appeared from somewhere, and he was enthusiastically scarfing down what looked like biscuits with raisins or something in them; he'd grabbed a mug that was more the size of a bowl. Angel was handing around a plate of -- what the hell, were those _cucumber_ sandwiches? -- and Sean was refilling one of the teapots from the kettle. 

Charles picked up the other pot and poured two more mugs of tea, stirring in -- _sugar and milk?_ In _tea?_ Some kind of freaky-ass British version of a latte or something, whatever. He'd changed into a white button-up shirt and a ridiculous beige sweater-vest that made him look more like Hank's grandfather than his father, especially with that belly.

He set the sturdy mugs on a couple of incongruously frilly saucers and handed them over with a sunny smile. Hank took the chair next to his dad, so Alex took the chair next to Hank, and tried not to make too weird a face when he took a sip of his freaky British tea latte whatever-the-hell-it-was.

"There now, isn't this better?" Charles said, spreading some weirdly pale butter on a couple of those raisin biscuits and topping them with a spoon of jam, then plating up some fruit and cheese and nuts before passing them over. "Warm, dry, and a nice spot of tea before the littles have their lessons. How on earth this country has managed to survive without any semblance of a proper afternoon tea... hmph."

"That's what Starbucks is for," the black kid said with a grin.

"Psh. _Starbucks_. I'd be ashamed to serve a guest those dry little crusts they sell for exorbitant amounts of money--"

"They're called biscotti, Papa," Angel said, giggling.

"They're called an absurd excuse for profiteering, is what they're called. Would you like biscuits as well, Alex? Fresh from the oven."

Alex blinked down at his plate, where he hadn't even started on his first biscuit. Charles half-swallowed a laugh he tried to turn into an unconvincing cough.

"Ah, no -- those are scones, dear boy, with clotted cream. I meant the ginger nuts -- 'cookies,'" and he even made air quotes. "Two great countries divided by a common language, and all that."

"Oh. Uh. Sure, whatever."

The little black girl picked up the plate carefully and offered it to him. "Are you Hank's boyfriend?" she asked.

Hank sprayed a mouthful of tea across the table, and started choking on the liquid he'd inhaled. 

"Oh dear," Charles said, watching the extraordinary series of colors his son was turning, one hand raised and hesitating over whether it would be helpful to pound him between the shoulderblades or not. 

With a certain giddily vicious amusement, Alex watched Hank out of the corner of his eye as he said, "Yeah."

He hadn't realized it was humanly possible for someone to turn pale and purple at the same time. Hank managed it somehow, still spluttering and wheezing.

"Oh. Okay." The little girl offered him a blindingly bright grin; she was missing one of her front teeth. "My name's Ororo."

Not to be outdone, the girl beside her said, "I'm Wanda."

"Pleased to meet you both, ladies," Alex said, with what he hoped was a creditable attempt at a straight face. Wanda blushed and giggled, hiding her face behind both hands; somehow, impossibly, Ororo's smile got even brighter.

"I like him, Hank!" she 'whispered' toward her biggest brother in far too excited (and loud) a voice. Hank had turned scarlet to the tips of his ears, and he looked like he wanted to slide under the table and die.

Rubbing his son's shoulder comfortingly, Charles declared to the room at large, "Right. Where _are_ our manners? Introductions all round, I should think."

The little howler who still hadn't stopped running laps around the table was Wanda's twin brother Pietro; the quiet Indian boy was Neal, and the tall teenager was Darwin, and apparently there were a dozen more members of the motley crew who hadn't arrived home yet. 

Hank still looked utterly miserable; Alex wished he had the balls to reach over and take his hand the way his dad had done so effortlessly. But it looked like Hank _still_ thought he was just mocking him, in front of the whole crazy lunatic-asylum crew of his family, and Alex couldn't stand the thought of reaching over and having Hank pull away from him. 

So he sat and drank his bizarro tea concoction and let the noise of the kids wash over them all, and tried hard not to wish that he could really stay. There was no way he could stay in a place like this; their stuff was _expensive,_ and if he fucked up and blasted something by mistake, the insurance bastards would jack up their rates for centuries, and Hank's parents had all these kids to take care of, even if they weren't all really theirs.

Fumbling around for something to offer to the conversation, watching Wanda and Ororo chase Pietro around the table, Alex asked Angel, "So how many of you lot are Hank's brothers and sisters?"

"All of us," she said with a grin.

"No, I mean like... like, _really_."

"All of us, of course," Charles said with a laugh, reaching out to catch Ororo around the waist. Giggling, the little girl turned on her most angelic smile, and so did Charles, resting his chin fondly on the top of her head. "See the family resemblance?" he teased. "I've been told it's all in the eyes."

They both did have stunningly blue eyes, and dimples framing their smiles. Charles kissed her shock of white hair unselfconsciously, and let her go resume the game of chase around the table.

"They adopted most of us, yeah," Darwin said, spearing another wedge of melon with a fork. "Some of us are still stuck in paperwork limbo, but they don't treat any of us any different than Wanda and Pete."

"Of course we wouldn't. It would be far too confusing."

"What's different about Wanda and Pete?" Alex asked, puzzled

"Nothing at all," Charles said, surprisingly emphatic. "You're _all_ our children, regardless of what any silly little snippets of genetic material might say about it."

"We know that, Papa," Angel said, with an indulgent grin. "It's just that _some_ of us took a metric fuckton more personal exertion out of you."

Before Alex could ask what exactly that meant, the side door banged open and a stunningly hot blonde woman carrying a dozen clothing and shoe bags and a baby-sling strode in; she hooked an ankle around a stool and slumped onto it with a groan. Charles immediately pushed his chair back; just as immediately, Hank and Sean both put their hands on his shoulders to keep him still, and Darwin moved to help her untangle the mess of bag straps.

"I'd thought you'd left Kurt here with Mrs. McDonough, Raven, love," Charles said anxiously, and the woman gave an exhausted snort of laughter.

"Yeah, that didn't last past naptime. He's getting better at tracking me down. You take him for a bit? He likes you better than the staff anyway." She'd only partially gotten herself untangled from the baby sling when something popped and Charles suddenly had a double-armful of happily squealing baby. ...Happily squealing, very _blue_ baby.

"Ah, Kurt, liebling, your mama needs her shopping time to herself," Charles said, settling the weird little thing atop his belly and patting the tiny blue nose with a gentle fingertip. 

The baby chortled and grabbed at his finger, shoving it into his mouth to gum enthusiastically. Charles smiled down at his little armful of squirming space alien with perfectly untroubled affection.

Alex realized his jaw was hanging open again, and shut it with a snap.

Okay. So Hank's dad was all right with mutants. At least, with harmless blue space alien babies; that didn't mean he was okay with out of control punks who blew shit up, but at least he wouldn't have to be so careful not to mention _anything_ about why people kept kicking him to the curb like last night's trash, and...

...and Charles's eyes were as disconcertingly deep and blue as the sky. For a minute, Alex was wildly afraid he might fall in, and never stop falling.

"Hank, dear, haven't you told Alex anything at all about our family?"

Sinking even lower in his chair, Hank mumbled, "I didn't know where to start."

"Hm. Well, I suppose I do rather see the difficulty there." 

"I make clouds happen," Ororo announced, propping her chin on the table next to Charles. "An' rain. Lightning is too loud, though. I like the clouds."

"Neal makes fire," Wanda piped up. "An' Pietro is really fast. An' Sean sings in the shower an' Vati says he sounds like a wet cat-- 

"Hey!" Sean protested, laughing.

"An' Angel flies, an' I dunno what I'll do. Papa says that's okay not to know, though. Do you know what you do?"

"He's Hank's boyfriend, silly," Ororo said, swinging her feet. "He doesn't have to do anything."

"Well, he doesn't _have_ to, but maybe he _wants_ to?" Wanda tilted her head and studied him intently. "Do you do anything?"

"Uh." Briefly, madly, Alex wondered if there was room for him and Hank both to hide under the table. "I, uh, blow sh-... stuff up. Sometimes."

"Cool," Neal said, wide-eyed. It was the first sound he'd heard from the quiet kid.

"Very cool," Charles agreed, smiling up at him, and Alex didn't have the heart to tell him that nobody's parents had any business using the word 'cool.' Maybe he'd picked it up from the kids and didn't realize there was an age limit, what with the whole British thing.

The little blue baby chortled and poofed out of Charles' arms, reappearing in his mother's lap with no warning; after a startled yelp and clutch at him, she sighed. "Kid, one of these days you're going to give me a heart attack," she said, exasperated affection in every line of her, and she tossed him lightly in the air to make him squeal with glee.

"I think he wants lunch," Charles offered; Raven rolled her eyes and started unbuttoning her shirt, and Alex thought he might pass out from the sudden rush of all the blood in his body straight up to his burning face. 

Angel laughed at him even as she tossed one of the towels toward Raven; the woman caught it out of the air with a suddenly blue hand, and under her shirt she was blue too, and Alex hastily turned around before his treacherous brain tried to figure out exactly how far it went, and there were things he did _not_ need to think about, about a blue woman's nipples, and right, _not_ thinking about it.

At least Charles was keeping his eyes just as carefully averted as Alex was. 

"In any case, let me assure you that you are among kindred spirits here," he said, quite earnestly. "Every one of our family is a mutant, either manifested or in potentia. And I do mean our _family_ , Alex. We are absolutely a family, for all that Wanda and Pietro are the only children to whom I personally gave birth."

Alex felt a bit like Charles had belted him across the back of the head with a two-by-four. 

"Guh -- whuh --whatthe _fuck?"_ he wheezed, only remembering about impressionable ears at a sudden fit of giggles from around the table. 

He couldn't keep himself from staring at Charles. If they were _all_ mutants, that -- that would explain a hell of a lot about the way that old-man sweater stretched over the mound of his belly, and no wonder Hank hadn't known how the fuck to start explaining anything, and--

Charles blushed as charmingly as he did everything else, his cheeks delicately pinked and his bitten bottom lip flushed red. With a slight gesture toward the sweater, he stammered, "I -- yes, I'm afraid I am a bit unmistakably in an -- interesting condition at present. In the family way, as it were." 

Alex's brain was coming up with a string of file-not-found errors. He couldn't even start to process the fact that Hank's _dad_ was sitting there all, all _gestating_ at them,and the guy could blather on about quantum physics but couldn't seem to pronounce the word 'pregnant.'

"I do apologize that I can't dress more -- discreetly, concealingly, but they don't precisely offer lines of maternity wear for men, and. Um. Do you mind awfully?" Charles asked, visibly anxious. "I _can_ assure you my condition is not in the least contagious! You'd be surprised how many men do wonder, often with a great deal of leg-crossing and, er, I'm babbling now, aren't I. Dreadfully sorry about that. Do please say _something_. Or at the very least, breathe. Not to be overly directive, but I feel I really _must_ highly recommend continuing to breathe as a lifestyle choice one really ought put some effort into maintai--"

Mercifully, Hank reached over and put a big hand over his dad's mouth, and Alex had never more desperately wanted to kiss him. Sean was shaking with barely-stifled snickers, both hands over his mouth; Darwin was grinning from ear to ear. Raven said loudly, " _Thank_ you, Hank."

Charles' lost-hurt-puppy look was as utterly devastating as his stern look wasn't. When Charles turned those _eyes_ on him, Alex felt like he'd just been kicked in the gut. 

He opened his mouth to try to choke out some kind of apology or reassurance or something, but what actually fell out was "You mean Hank's not really yours?"

Hank flinched. Charles pulled Hank's hand away from his mouth and said, utterly appalled, "What? Do the sweaters really make me look _that_ much older?"

" _Yes,_ " Raven, Angel, and Sean said in emphatic unison, and Charles absolutely wilted. 

"Traitors, the lot of you."

Wanda giggled; Pietro actually paused in his incessant laps around the table, putting his little arms around Charles as far as he could reach. 

"I still love you, Papa," he announced.

" _Thank_ you, Pietro." Ruffling the boy's fair hair, he asked, "Even when I lumber about like a bloody great hippopotamus?"

"'Course. I like pippapottersisses too," he said, patting Charles' snug-stretched sweater, painstakingly careful to use his gentlest touches.

With a sigh, Charles hugged the little boy close and kissed his brow, then released him back into the wilds to resume his natural low-orbit flight path.

"Hank's parents loved him very much," Charles said softly, reaching over to stroke a lock of hair back from his eldest son's bowed head. "They were killed in an accident when he was only five. I will always regret that Erik and I weren't legally able to take him in until I'd turned eighteen, but it was a stipulation of my inheritance, and we couldn't afford to ignore the resources this place would provide for a growing family of children with special circumstances. And I suppose that in hindsight I can see Child and Family Services having a few qualms about teenagers raising an orphaned child, living all the way out here with only one of us old enough to legally drive, for all I insisted that that was what the chauffeur was paid for."

Raven made a half-strangled snort.

"Well, it _was_ ," Charles said mildly. "So when Hank was seven, we had a whirlwind of a spring. I turned eighteen on May 10, finished my first degree on May 18, and on May 21st Erik and I wed in Amsterdam because it wasn't legal here yet. On June 4 we signed the last of the paperwork and brought him home with us for good. And he's been really, truly ours ever since." Then, with a teasing glint in his eyes, he cast Alex an arch look: "So while I suppose it might _technically_ be biologically possible for me to have fathered him at the ripe old age of eleven..."

"Heh. More likely Erik at fourteen," Darwin said, grinning. "I could totally buy _him_ being precocious."

"I was precocious!" Charles insisted, arms crossed mock-affrontedly atop the bulge of that ridiculous old-man sweater. "Exactly how many eighteen year olds do you expect have doctorates from Oxford?"

"There's mentally precocious and then there's physically precocious." Sean leered at him and waggled insinuating eyebrows, snickering.

"Wait up, a doctorate was your _first_ degree?" Alex asked.

"Oh, no, I meant that was my first doctorate," Charles clarified helpfully. "I'm working on my third at the moment. I'm quite fortunate that I haven't had morning sickness since my first trimester with the twins. Life becomes _ever_ so much easier to manage when one doesn't need to plan one's day around the location of the nearest washbasin..."

Alex scrubbed a hand down his face, realizing that he had to forgive Hank for not explaining shit, because like fuck would _he_ have had any fucking clue where to start explaining a circus like this crazy-ass place either.

With the grin of a cat eyeing an untended bowl of cream, Angel leaned over and said, "Wait 'til you meet his husband."

...well, shit. Yeah, _that_ wasn't ominous in the least.


	2. Meeting the not-exactly-in-laws of a family of choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Logan is a jerk, the Defenders of Literacy assemble, Charles blames their other father for the children's affection for capes, and Emma _doesn't_ warn Alex about Charles, quite deliberately. (No one ever said she was merciful.)

Alex had an instinct for people that had nothing to do with mutation and everything to do with surviving street fights with as few bones broken as possible. 

So when yet another staggeringly hot blonde (and where the hell did Hank's geeky-pregnant-and-married dad find them all?) walked in next to a big dripping man carrying all of his boxes and his duffel like it was literally nothing, Alex sat a little straighter in his chair, trapped between _don't look like easy prey_ and _don't challenge him._

"--can't believe they haven't fired that brain-dead zombie driving the UPS truck yet," the man was telling the woman, "who the hell leaves boxes of books sitting out in the rain outside a school? You should call their manager and ream their asses out, Emma, you're a natural bitch--"

Ororo gasped and put her hands over her ears; Neal dragged a towel over his head to try to hide, and Wanda giggled. Alex felt the blood draining out of his face. 

_Bad idea, what happened to not pissing him off,_ the small sane part of his brain told himself loud and clear, even as he heard himself saying, "Hold up, quickdraw. Who let you out in public, talking to a lady like that in front of a bunch of little kids?"

Raven choked on her tea, and turned a shade of blue that would have been much more disturbing on anyone else. Hank had slid down until he was nearly horizontal in his chair, face hidden in both hands. Charles was rubbing the bridge of his nose as though either he had a throbbing headache or he was desperately trying to keep himself from laughing. 

Shaking the rain out of her parasol with a crisp flick, Emma told him, _Believe me, I ask myself that question on a daily basis. Sometimes hourly._ Alex wasn't entirely sure he'd seen her lips move. Maybe she was a ventriloquist. Wouldn't be the weirdest shit in this house by a long, long shot.

The big guy was giving him a disturbingly slow once-over, and then sniffed at the boxes. "You're the _tas de marde_ who left some kid's books out in the rain?" 

"No, that would be my foster parents," Alex shot back, glaring. So far the big guy was still radiating lazy, indolent, _well-sated_ predator, but Alex had enough experience with hair-triggered assholes to know how fast that could change. 

Something odd crossed the big guy's face. "Oh. Sorry, kid."

\--the fuck? They _never_ apologized--

The big guy set his boxes on the floor and dropped the sopping duffel next to them, giving him a crooked grin. "You want Emma here to rip your foster folks a new one? I'm serious about the natural bitch, by the way. It's unfuckingbelievable watching her in high gear, I shit you not."

Alex spluttered incoherently over what part of that mess he should try to tackle first. Angel had put her hands over Wanda's ears, Sean had his hands over Neal's, and a broadly grinning Darwin had his hands over Sean's, much to Sean's irritation. The big guy blinked, and then smacked a palm over his face.

"Oh fuck. I mean _crisse_ , I forgot, kids -- sorry, Chuck. It's just -- _books._ "

Still rubbing his forehead, Charles said in a half-strangled voice, "Do please _try_ to be careful, Logan. Emma, my dear, thank you for coming on such short notice -- would you care for tea?"

"Yes, please. It's so refreshing to rejoin _civilized_ company."

The moment Charles stood to reach for one of the teapots, though, Logan's jaw dropped open. Unfortunately, the moment of stunned silence didn't last through the pouring of Emma's tea.

"Jesus Christ, Chuck, you're the size of a whale!"

"Shut _up_ ," Alex hissed through bared teeth. "Don't _say_ that to someone who's-- urk."

His brain only barely managed to get control of his mouth in time, before he blurted it all out -- did _Logan_ know Charles was pregnant? Maybe he didn't, maybe he-- uh, he was growling -- no, shit, he was _laughing,_ the asshole.

Emma shoved past Logan and took the cup and saucer from Charles quite calmly.

"Ignore him, darling. You look radiant," she said. "And we all know he's got the sensitivity of a rabid stoat."

"Hey!"

Tugging uncomfortably at the snug, bulging sweater, pink-cheeked with shame that made Alex absolutely heartsick to see, Charles stammered, "I -- now I _know_ you're being too kind, my dear, because you've left me in no doubt as to your usual opinion of my fashion sense--"

"Nonsense," Emma told him crisply. "Your fashion non-sense. You have no fashion sense whatsoever. That has nothing to do with the fact that you're absolutely blossoming." 

"I told you, natural bitch," Logan complained to the ceiling, shaking his head like a wet dog and spraying water all over the room; the kids shrieked and spluttered and giggled. Stomping over to the table and slinging a chair around backwards to drop into it, he grinned evilly across the table at the pair of them. "So how many chins you got now, slim?"

Shocked, Charles' hands flew to hide his throat.

 _\--all right, that's fucking IT._

Alex had shoved his chair back and lunged to his feet before he even realized what he was doing. He would have thrown himself straight across the table if Hank's sudden frantic grip on his shirt hadn't slowed him down, and Alex took one half-crazed fraction of a second to realize _oh yeah, his dad's china -- that tea set's important to them_.

"You want to take this outside, fucktard?" he growled, barely recognizing his own voice. 

"Everyone, please, do calm yourselves," Charles said. "I must insist that there is to be _no_ bloodshed during teatime. It quite puts one off one's digestion."

Logan opened his mouth to make a snide comment, probably about Charles' digestion and the size of his belly, and Emma shoved a scone into it to shut him up. As the big bastard hacked and wheezed, Alex wondered if Hank would be upset if he was a little bit madly in lust with Emma's brain.

Emma cast a glance at him acroos the table, and smiled the smile of a sleek Persian cat with a crystal bowl full of cream. 

_You are a darling, aren't you,_ she said. _Thank you; it's a pleasant change to have my_ mental _assets appreciated by a man. You should keep Hank, if he ever lets you catch him; you'd do wonderfully by each other._

Right about then, Alex's brain clicked over from the background thought of _yeah, her physical assets are pretty damn impressive too, I can see why she'd get sick of the ogling_ to _holy fuck she said that in my head_ and _oh SHIT what have I been thinking, when was it I was fantasizing about Hank's ohfuck wrongthoughts shitshitshitI'msorryma'am--_

Outside, Emma sipped at her delicate porcelain cup of tea; inside, she snickered at him wickedly, with a mental impression of waving a hand. _Don't worry, I've heard worse. Don't bother trying to censor yourself; you'll just give yourself a headache unless you know what you're doing. And sit down before Charles frets himself into polysyllabic run-on sentences again._

 _Oh. Shit. Right. Sorry._

Alex dropped back into his chair with alacrity; Hank breathed a huge sigh of relief, touching his shoulder with awkward care. Alex hunched up and tried not to think sour things about how his boyfriend had no confidence in his ability to defend his poor sweet pregnant dad from a cocky asshole who seriously wasn't _that_ much taller--

 _You couldn't take him,_ Emma said, quite pitilessly. _He sprouts meter-long metal claws and he's effectively immortal. Listen to your genius boyfriend when he wants to tell you things, sugar._

Well. Shit. 

Raven had finally thumped the last of her tea out of her lungs, and shifted from coughing-wheezing to laughing-wheezing. Logan grabbed one of the pots and drank the tea straight out of the spout, trying to wash down the scone.

"¡Estás cabrón loco!" Angel told Alex, grinning broadly. "Me gusta."

"Uh, thanks, I think," Alex said, mentally paging through what he remembered of the extracurricular 'lessons' he'd gotten outside his Spanish class and wondering whether she meant it more in the sense of 'crazy badass' or 'flaming gay goatfucker.' Or maybe both. He doubted it would be in the vocabulary list in the back of his now-drenched textbook, anyway.

"Yeah, whatever," Logan grumbled, and thumped at his chest with a fist that echoed oddly in an effort to dislodge the last soggy bits of scone. "Listen, pipsqueak, Chuck and I know each other's limits around here. I make him cry, his husband rips out my spine and uses it for a toothpick."

"Good," Alex said at the same moment Raven did, and she gave him a bright grin with way too many teeth in it. Charles scrubbed both hands over his face, looking like he might have considered knocking his head against the table if he'd been able to bend in the middle far enough.

 _"At any rate,_ " he declared loudly. "Children, we have lessons to prepare. And I've thought of a wonderful idea--"

That announcement was met with universal groans. Alex bit his lip hard to keep from laughing, because Charles looked so utterly woebegone at their reaction.

"No more plant breeding for color mutations, Papa," Darwin sighed. "It takes two months to be able to see anything interesting. Five year olds have a tough time waiting two minutes."

"But not at the microcellular -- _anyway_ , I do know better now, I promise," Charles said. "No genetics, on my honor."

"No science?" Sean asked suspiciously. "At all?"

"Oh, I can't promise _that."_

They groaned again. Charles waved both hands in the air frantically. 

"But it's only the flashy, plebeian, circus-act version of science!" he all but begged. "Capillary action and thermodynamics and--"

Suddenly, Alex was more surprised that Hank _wasn't_ biologically related to Charles. The thought that that level of bone-deep hardcore geekery might run in _two_ unrelated sets of families was kind of unnerving.

"Don't make him cry, kids," Logan drawled, grinning from ear to ear.

"Remember when Ororo, er, discovered how to make rainbows in the library, and all the rain indoors?" Charles offered, one last desperate salvo against the sloughs of despond. "It's been raining dreadfully all day, and our new friend Alex's books are in desperate need of rescue and succor -- and you all know what that means, don't you?"

"Yeah!" the little ones cheered, suddenly much more enthusiastic.

Reassured by the children's change in mood, Charles made a grandiose gesture with both hands. 

"Defenders of Literacy, to your battle stations!"

The battle cries and peals of laughter rang down the halls as the children dashed off through the mansion toward whatever it was that sounded so much better than science. 

Rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, Darwin said, "Why didn't you pitch it that way to start with, Papa?"

"But library science's salvage and preservation branch is quite rigorously scientific -- there are applications in organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry and molecular physics and-- and honestly, Darwin, I don't know where you children have gotten such dreadful notions. Science isn't dull at _all,_ is it, Hank?"

Caught out by the sudden focus of everyone's attention, Hank was obviously torn between the defense of his passion and the judgement of cynical-eyed teenage siblings. "I, er, uh..."

Sean shook his head ruefully. "Papa, you've got your hard sciences down cold, but you could use some work on your motivational child psychology."

Alex nudged Hank in the ribs with an unsubtle elbow. "What just happened?"

"Oh! We're going to save your books," Hank said, perking up immediately; he was unfairly adorable-looking, because Alex knew he'd better not think _too_ loudly about wanting to kiss him in front of the smirky lady telepath.

"Quite a marvelous bundle of lessons all in one," Charles agreed, smiling at them both. "The littlest ones learn counting and measuring the blotting paper and cutting straight lines. The older ones learn finer use of their powers -- and everyone learns how to save something that was thought irredeemable." 

"You mean they're not just trashed?"

"Certainly not. We might lose a few, I'm afraid, but it's remarkable how well some books freeze-dry. Unless the pages are glossy, in which case we hope to intervene with the blotting paper before the clay layers completely fuse shut, and little Ororo can help us maintain the necessary humiity level until we've gotten through them all--"

That kicked him in the gut with a sudden guilt trip, because 'until we've gotten through them all' sounded like an awfully long time for a little kid. "Don't worry about it," Alex said, strained. "Seriously, it's all just worthless old shit, it's not worth your trouble."

"But your dad gave you those comic books," Hank said, startled. "They're important to you. Of course it's worth it."

"And a nice big vat of boiling water will give us all the steam we need if Ororo starts to find it a bit dull," Charles reassured him, reaching over to pat his hand. "Tell me, do you know how to tie a slip knot?"

"Uh. What?"

"It's only that the children will be wanting their heroic costumes, you see." He picked up a napkin, gave it a flourish, and rolled up his sleeve to offer a bare wrist to Hank. "If you'd care to demonstrate?"

"They've all got decorated beach towels for when we do wet stuff," Hank admitted sheepishly, folding one corner back and picking up the two new points to fasten a 'cape' around his dad's wrist. "If you tie it like this, the kids that want to be all dramatic have got little built-in hoods and everything." He tugged up the little hood and arranged it over his dad's puppet-hand.

That... was just revoltingly adorable. Alex had a feeling he was _never_ going to recover his badass image if he spent too long around this crew.

"And we've got to make sure the knot slips in case anyone steps on anyone else's cape, too," Hank said, demonstrating. A quick tug pulled the napkin off, and he handed it to Alex to let him try. "Who was it that got them fixated on capes anyway?"

"I blame your father."

"Yeah, that's a safe bet," Darwin said, grinning.

Unsurprisingly, Pietro was the first one back to the kitchen, carrying his beach towel and a big roll of blotting paper; Charles praised him lavishly, and Hank made a show of adjusting his cape just right. 

The girls and Neal came trotting back in a couple of minutes later, loaded down with towels. Ororo's towel was sky-blue with clouds and rainbows all over it. Neal's had orange and yellow splotches and ragged edges that fluttered when he ran around. Angel's had dragonfly wings in a dozen shimmery-pastel colors. Hank's had scientific equations written all over it, and a big neon-hazard-orange splash in the middle labeled 'kaboom!' 

Darwin's was red -- just red, and Alex had to admit it was the most dignified-looking of the crazy lot. Red was reasonably heroic, and also reasonably sane-looking. Darwin definitely beat out Sean in Alex's mental Beachtowel Runway lineup; Sean had covered a tie-dyed towel in heavy metal band logos cut out of old concert shirts, and half of them were peeling off.

Ororo and Wanda had brought towels for the adults, too -- an all-white one for Emma, a yellow striped one for Logan, a blue one for Raven. Some wiseass had painted a towel in argyle-sock geeky-professor beige-and-blue plaid for Charles, which he accepted with the same familiar delight that most people used for a bouquet of flowers. 

(Alex might have blamed Logan for the sartorial wiseassery, except that the argyle pattern was set at _just_ the right angle to lay properly when someone did the folded-corner trick with the beach towel. That smacked of a conspiracy by Emma and Angel, and maybe Raven too. Emma smirked at him, looking way too fucking unfairly dignified with a white beach towel cape primly arranged over her shoulders as she said _We plead the Fifth._ )

Hiding his head under the hoodie-end of his towel and chewing on a finger, Neal tiptoed over to Alex and tugged on his sleeve. He handed over another towel, bright-eyed.

"So you and Hank match," he offered, then lost his nerve and fled back to the giggling girls.

"Oh no," Hank said, with two bright splotches of pink coloring his cheekbones. "That's -- that was -- I thought it was a nice towel, but Raven said something had to explode, and then everyone thought it looked like some kind of nuclear disaster or something, I thought we got rid of it, I'm sorry, he didn't mean that you-- he didn't mean it like that--"

The beach towel had originally held a picture of a scenic sunset with palm trees, before Raven had scrawled her enthusiastic _Kaboom!_ across it in the same handwriting that marked Hank's current chemistry-explosion-towel. It really did look like some kind of bomb testing was going on.

Alex stepped down hard on the thought that yeah, he had a bomb's unholy capacity to fuck up any family he got too close to, and told himself, _Neal thinks I'm cool. And Hank's probably the best big brother ever. And, hell, when in Rome._  
  
"I can deal with matching explosions," he said, and tied the towel around his neck. 

The hit to his style was worth it for the astonished delight shining in Hank's eyes. 

"Brilliant!" Charles said, beaming. "Now you need a team name!"

" _Papa,_ " Hank groaned. "We _don't_ need a team name."

"Of course you do. We have the Defenders of Literacy, joining forces with--?" He made little beckoning gestures, expectant.

"Team Combustible," Darwin said, grinning.

"Xtreme Xplosions!" Sean piped up, miming the Xes with his fingers and everything.

Charles' stern look was really pretty amazingly useless. 

"Really, boys. I had _hoped_ for something much more supportive and encouraging. The Pillars of Westchester High or some such--"

Even polite little Ororo groaned out loud at that one.

"Chuck, you hopeless dweeb, just give it up and admit you are the antithesis of cool," Logan said.

Charles quirked a brow. "I beg your pardon. The _antithesis_ of cool? Wherever did you even _learn_ that word?"

Raven pounded a fist on the table, doubled up howling. Angel licked a finger and made a sizzling noise; Darwin said, " _Burned._ "

"In the dictionary, right next to your mug shot," Logan tossed back easily, grabbing another fistful of cookies from the plate.

"What's antifisis?" Wanda asked.

"Let's check the dictionary and find out," Charles said with a somehow maniacally beatific smile. "I _do_ hope that the photo is flattering."


	3. Erik will take care of everything. ...Everything.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"The point here," Charles said a bit desperately, "is that when you tell me in one breath that you're all conspiring with Erik to spare me any potential distress, and in the next that Erik is teaching the children_ hand to hand combat _as a method of interpersonal problem-solving for the_ library book club--"
> 
> In which Erik gets home, Emma points out the Xavier family tendency to romantic attraction to demons from hell (which might somehow make Alex an improvement), and Charles insists that Erik keep his promises.

There had been, of course, no photo in the dictionary, despite Charles' mock-'bewildered' searching high and low, and even turning the book upside down and shaking the loose pages for a minute. 

Logan grumbled under his breath about how some people were much too smug about their victories. 

Emma promptly offered him another scone.

"Speaking of smug," Logan muttered. "Only if it comes with a _plate_ this time, woman."

"Oh, don't worry, sugar. I'm sure your mouth is big enough for me to fit the plate in too."

" _Children,_ " Charles said, with a suspicious twitch at the corner of his lips. "Must I send someone into time-out? ...No? Very good. Have we more scissors for Alex, Angel?"

Alex managed a sickly grin as Angel handed him some scissors, and he bent to cutting more sheets of blotting paper to the size of his dad's comics.

Any time an adult called attention to him, Alex found himself tensing up. He realized, to his chagrin, that after eight rounds on the foster-family spin cycle he was already bracing himself for the inevitable interrogation.

Alex didn't really have a reference point for 'sleepovers with a friend'; the closest he had was traveling with the basketball team to the regionals, and having the coach and his teammates' chaperoning dads run him through an abbreviated high-speed version of the interrogation to make sure he wasn't going to kill or maim whichever unlucky bastards were assigned with him in the hotel room for the night.

Usually they led off with an attempt at manly bonding: "so, Alex, how about them--" name-the-guy's-favorite-sports-team-here. Either that or favorite foods, if they were nerdy enough not to have a sport to make small talk about. 

Next, they prodded about school. First they made a nod or two at pretending interest in whatever subject he pretended he was interested in. Then they got into the meat of the matter: whether he was likely to either cause or get into any trouble that might reflect negatively on their reputation with their neighbors. 

Then they laid down the house rules, and then finally they assured him that his past troubles were all behind him and they were sure they'd all get along _just fine_ while angling their way around to trying to learn how exactly he'd gotten himself thrown out of the last foster family. Or two. Or five.

So Charles was really screwing with his head.

Alex knew his own reputation. Hell, he'd _started_ some of his own reputation, because it kept some of the smarter thugs off his ass. 

_Everyone_ knew his reputation. There was no way Hank _didn't_ know his reputation, but he'd brought Alex into a house with some really damn expensive shit and a lot of innocent little kids and his too-friendly, too-harmless, too- _pregnant_ dad. 

But apparently Hank hadn't told his family anything about Alex any more than he'd told Alex anything about his family. 

Because Charles _wasn't_ asking any of the questions that danced around _how quickly do you go ballistic_ and/or _do you give off any recognizable warning signals first_ and/or _are you going to steal the silver before or after you set fire to the place._

...well, no, Hank must have at least told them Alex was on the basketball team. Charles knew Alex's jersey number was 22 and that he played point guard; he was trying to make some convoluted metaphorical comparison between the structure of a basketball team and the Fantastic Four for Neal and Wanda, who were avidly reading Alex's comic books as they laid blotting paper sheets between the soggy pages they'd finished reading. 

The trouble was, Charles was treating him _just like_ a member of the family -- no intrusive questions, no rigidly-fixed-and-slightly-terrified smiles, no dragging words out of him that he didn't want to give, no angling for history or incidents. 

Just simple, unquestioning acceptance. 

Except that Alex already knew that acceptance was _never_ simple, and never, _ever_ unquestioning.

It was really, _really_ freaking him out. _Nobody_ was stupid enough to just -- _let him in_ like this. No way in hell a guy with two and a half-going-on-three doctorates was stupid...

...though, if it ran in the family, if Charles was the same type of mad-genius space-cadet Hank was... 

Yeah, Alex could totally imagine that _Hank's_ dad could be so detached from how the real world worked that sometimes it was kind of hard to tell the difference between that and stupid. 

Hank had the most incredible brain of anyone Alex had ever met, but he scored off the bottom of the scale when it came to stuff like common sense. See also: just went and brought home a violent juvenile delinquent who'd half wrecked his eighth foster family's house, leaving Hank's whole family, his whole home, _everything,_ completely defenseless against Alex's amazing dual powers of fuckuppery and mass destruction.

_Not completely defenseless, darling,_ Emma told him, and Alex's first reaction was a rush of sheer relief.

_You mean you could shut my brain down before I blew something up?_ he asked, and then hot on its heels came the scalding shame-sear of _shitfuckdamn--how much of the rest of that did you hear about how badly I fuck up everyone's life around me--_

_Down, boy. Easy there._

And then she did something in his head that felt like a soft dusting of snow melting away his fevered panic, a cool, comforting cloth against his forehead, a kind, soothing, maternal touch. 

Alex bit down hard on his lip and tried desperately not to think of how long it had been since his _real_ mother had-- no. No. Time to stop, to lock it all down. But-- still-- _someone_ had to-- Emma _ought_ to--

_Aren't you going to warn Charles about me?_ he asked, feeling sick.

_Why would I?_

_Why wouldn't you?_ he shot back, startled. _You don't_ want _them getting hurt, do you?_

He couldn't seem to stop thinking about it. He was already dreading what it would look like to have to see hurt and disappointment on Charles's face. Or, worse, fear. Or -- God -- fear from the little kids, or from _Hank_...

Emma finished layering the blotting paper through his sophomore yearbook and picked up the next book in the box, with perfectly unruffled calm. 

_Charles doesn't need warning about anything, sweetheart. Trust me on this one._

_You do know what I've done, don't you?_ Alex asked, because how could _anyone_ look at that and not back off fast and look for a bunker?

_Obviously, since you're obsessing over it,_ she replied. _You know, if I were a merciful woman, I'd have warned you about Charles instead. Of course, I'm not a merciful woman._

...well, okay. He had to admit the whole 'Hank's _dad_ being pregnant' thing had been kind of a brain-breaker for a while there. 

But seriously, looking at the bigger picture here, what Hank's dads did with each other in bed was -- definitely _NOT_ a set of mental images he wanted _anything at all_ to do with, even apart from the whole smirky-lady-telepath-listening-in factor, because dear God, he was _not thinking about_ _HANK'S parents having sex._ _But totally aside from that --_ a couple of dads getting frisky was a whole lot less explosive and dangerous than plasma bursts that tore straight through concrete and steel like hot butter...

_I'm not having that conversation for you, kid. Man up and tell him yourself. If you think he needs to know that you consider yourself a threat to his family, then_ you _get to face down those big soulful blue eyes._

...Well. Shit.

_You really aren't merciful, are you,_ Alex thought sourly at her.

_Not in the slightest._

"Alex," Hank said softly, peering at him with a worried crease in his brow, "are you okay? If -- if you want to call it a day, God, it's been a nightmare of a day for you already, and we can absolutely take care of your books and--"

Alex wondered how much his face had been giving away, and shook his head. _Not going to run away and hide and lie -- I owe Hank's family this, for even letting me in the door without knowing what they were risking._

With an attempt at a smile, he said, "I think maybe I should talk to your dad for a few minutes."

Hank's eyes went very wide. "A-about being b-b-boyfffff-... what-you-said-earlier?" he squeaked. "I mean, sure, but I was kind of hoping you might want to talk to me first? Actually I didn't even know we were -- involved. Er, _actually,_ I kind of don't, um, remember anybody ever asking me a-about--" 

_\--shit, now what? Think. Think FAST --_ hell, balls and bravado had gotten him this far. Alex put on a smirk he hoped looked more confident than he felt. 

"What? You planning to dump me already?" 

"No!" Hank yelped. "Of course not -- I mean -- you're -- I -- _no._ "

"So if you're not dumping me, then I'm still your boyfriend, right?"

"...okay?"

"Damn straight." Alex slammed back the last of his cup of tea and poured himself another with shaking hands. Somehow, that had managed to _not_ actually explode in his face. He really didn't want to press his luck. "Fine. Okay. Good."

Fixing them both with a slitted yellow stare, Raven muttered, "All right, big brother, you win. I take it back. All those times I said you and Erik held the record for the most dysfunctional communication issues on the planet? I take it all back. Congratulations. You've just lost your title."

"Thank you, my dear; I'll be certain to note it on the calendar," Charles observed faintly, looking back and forth between Alex and Hank with very wide eyes.

Darwin was making little snerking noises. Emma held herself _too_ perfectly poised. Logan was unrepentantly laughing his ass off.

" _Anyway,_ " Alex declared, hoping he wasn't blushing as hotly as he felt. "There's ...stuff I should tell your dad. In, like, private and stuff. So he knows whether or not he wants me around you."

"Dude," Sean said, "don't worry about it. We already know. Hank never shuts up about you."

Hank slumped forward over the table and buried his face in his arms.

" _Hank_ never shuts up?" Alex asked. " _This_ Hank?"

"Be fair, Sean," Darwin said, grinning. "Hank _never_ shuts up about science. He only _almost_ never shuts up about Alex."

"Kill me now," Hank groaned.

"No, wait up," Alex said. "He never _talks_ to me, he never told me a damn thing about his family, but he tells his family about me? I mean, why?"

"Calling him bozo was pretty uncool, man," Sean said, and Alex flinched.

"Shit. Look, I didn't mean..."

"Yeah you did," Sean said, looking at him steadily. "You were kind of a dick, just so you know."

"I... yeah. I am," Alex admitted, staring down at the ring left behind by a cup of tea. "I'm sorry."

Wanda looked up from her comic book. "Are you like Bobby Wilson and the barn kittens?" she asked Alex, with great interest. Angel did a spit-take, and started laughing.

"Yes, that's it precisely!" Charles said, delighted. "Well done, Wanda."

"Who's Bobby Wilson?" Alex asked, wary.

Wanda flashed him a bright, broad smile. "He's in the library book club. He used to pull my hair," she said. "Papa says it's because he didn't know how else to get my attention." 

"So you're saying I've got the emotional maturity of a toddler," Alex said, mouth twitching. "So how's Hank supposed to deal with that?"

"Hank should punch you," Wanda said sagely, kicking her legs under her chair. "Vati taught everybody how to punch people who hurt us and yell _NO_." 

" _Wanda!_ " Hank groaned, just as Pietro added in a loud whisper, "We promised Vati we wouldn't tell Papa about that, remember?"

"Excuse me, Vati taught you _what?_ " Charles asked, pained.

"How to punch hurty people really hard! Want to see?"

"I believe you," Alex said, feeling like someone had just shoved his brain into a washing machine set on the spin cycle. "Do you punch the barn kittens too?"

" _No,_ silly." She stuck out a little pink tongue at him. "Nobody punches _kittens._ You just have to be careful, because they don't know their feet are sharp. They don't want to hurt you, they just don't know better yet."

"Which was the comparison I'd _hoped_ for you to make in the first place," Charles said, running both hands through his hair. "Wanda, dear heart, I _thought_ that we'd agreed you would teach Bobby how to make paper airplanes to fly to you."

"Oh, I did that too, after he stopped crying."

"That little brat's going to be traumatized for life," Logan said, grinning from ear to ear. "Way to go, squirt. Gold star for you."

"...Logan, my friend, you are _not helping._ " Rubbing his forehead, Charles said, "And I don't suppose any of you know why every one of the librarians failed to bring this to my attention?"

"'Cause we gave them Vati's phone number instead," Pietro piped up. 

"Vati and Aunt Raven and Uncle Logan told us we're not supposed to let you get upset, Papa, because of the baby," Ororo explained, patting her father's hand gently. "So we're supposed to tell Vati whenever something might make you upset. So you don't have to worry 'cause Vati will fix it all."

The corner of Charles' eye was twitching. "Vati _and_ Aunt Raven _and_ Uncle Logan, hmm?"

"Outta here," Logan said, and bolted for the hallway.

"Coward!" Raven hollered after him. Angel crossed herself and started praying under her breath in Spanish. Even Darwin had gone a little pale.

"Raven," Charles said, in a voice that was somehow only a little strained around the edges, "you know how dearly I love you. Therefore, you know that if anything you are about to tell me involves concepts like 'disposal,' 'cover-up,' or, God help us, 'they'll never find the bodies'--"

"Goodness, look at the time," Raven said, looking at her wrist, where she wasn't actually wearing a watch. "Time for bitty blue babies to take a nap. _Right now._ Come on, Kurtling, let's go, it's time to save your mama's hide."

"I know where you sleep," Charles said pleasantly.

"So does your husband, and he's a lot scarier," Raven retorted, keeping her back to him as she juggled Kurt's sling and her bags. 

Angel slipped over to help her gather things up, and whispered, "Stay strong, sister."

"Raven..." 

"Jesus Christ, Charles. Not a chance. You'll start in with Those Eyes. Which should have been regulated by the Geneva Convention already."

"Raven, _please._ How would you feel if the children told you Azazel had taken it upon himself to 'fix everything' for you?" 

"The difference here being that Erik isn't _literally_ a demon from hell."

"You sure about that, honey?" Emma murmured into her teacup, and Raven shot her a betrayed look.

"Whose side are you on anyway?"

"I'm just saying, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Seriously, darling, your family's taste in men..."

"The _point_ here," Charles said a bit desperately, "is that when you tell me in one breath that you're all conspiring with Erik to spare me any potential distress, and in the next that Erik is teaching the children _hand to hand combat_ as a method of interpersonal problem-solving for the _library book club_ \--"

A new voice from the doorway said, "I was teaching them hand to hand combat as a method of fending off physical assaults. Are you blaming Wanda because her harasser chose the library as his preferred venue?"

When Alex got a look at the guy stalking across the room toward Charles' chair, all the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. As far as predators went, Logan was a big, lazy lion basking with a sunbeam and a full belly; this guy was a panther on the prowl, restless and savage and ready to kill to defend his territory.

"Vati!" the little kids crowed, and ran to swarm the stalking black-leather-clad predator around the knees. 

God, this place was a madhouse.

"I'm certainly not blaming Wanda," Charles said, following them across the room at his own heavily gravid, careful pace, leaning against the counter near where the sharp-faced man knelt carefully amid the children and turned his big, dangerous fighter's hands to cradling little cheeks and straightening crooked beachtowel capes. 

"Let's all guess who Papa _is_ blaming, then," Erik said, ruffling Neal's hair.

"I'm not blaming anyone. I do think perhaps we ought to have a family discussion about the _sequence_ of tactics we apply to a given situation. Considering the law of conservation of energy and all -- when it takes much less energy to hold a conversation than to initiate a fist fight, where is the harm in testing the conversational waters first?"

" _Papa,_ " Hank said, horrified. "That's not how the law of conservation of energy works!"

Every head in the room turned to look at him. 

Angel choked; Darwin made a half-stifled snicker, and maybe Emma was onto something with that demon from hell thing after all, because Erik's manic grin showed _way_ the hell more teeth than any one human being ought to have.

"See, Charles? Even Hank agrees with me."

"I'm sorry, Papa, I didn't -- I mean -- it's just -- it's _not,_ " Hank stammered, blushing. "Papa, why would you even...?"

"I was attempting a comedic fallacy through interdiscursive retextualization," Charles said, leaning as hard on his injured dignity as on the counter. "Which is a perfectly common rhetorical device, despite the unfortunate frequency of logical flaws in the discourse."

"Warn us the next time you plan to be funny, so we can brace for impact," Erik suggested.

"I love you too," Charles tossed back sulkily, crossing his arms and turning away.

Erik stood and waded through the seafroth of children about his knees, slipping both arms about Charles' prominent girth, cradling the curve of his belly with startling gentleness in those big, long-fingered hands. 

He bent his head to brush a soft kiss to Charles' temple, and murmured, "Shall I apologize with a tummy rub or a back rub?"

"Both at once," Charles declared. "You have two hands, don't you?" But he turned willingly in Erik's arms; he stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him, balancing himself with both hands on Erik's broad leather-sleeked shoulders, and then he settled back onto his heels with a small soft sigh. 

"You know all my weaknesses, you shameless wretch. And your hands are _freezing._ "

"Weakness exists to be exploited," Erik replied, smirking as he rubbed an insinuating hand over Charles' belly. "Over and over and over again."

"And so does my increasingly less portable internal heating system, yes, I know." 

Instead of pulling away, Charles cupped Erik's cold hands against the sides of his soft, snugly rounded sweater, rubbing warmth back into them with his own bare hands, and Alex thought to himself, _okay, that's got to be true love._

"Get a room, you two," Raven said, grinning.

Erik murmured something in heartfelt German, then swooped down to steal another kiss. He swung Charles into his arms with a bit of effort, then carried him over to a chair and settled him across his lap so that he could rub Charles' back and his belly at the same time. 

Brow to brow, looking steadily into his husband's eyes as he cradled the heavy curve of him in a possessive and protective hand, Erik murmured, "How are you feeling?"

Charles bit his lip for a moment, his fair skin pinking with embarrassment. 

"Fat," he admitted in a small voice. "Fat and clumsy and -- do I really have a double chin?"

Erik's eyes hardened into chips of sharp-edged glass; he lifted his head as sharply as a wild animal, casting about for the scent of the threat. 

"Logan's here, isn't he." 

"...oh, bother."

"I _thought_ I felt his bones. You stay right here; I'll take out the trash--"

"No, you _shan't._ " Catching Erik by the chin and pulling his head around, Charles said, "Logan or no, love, you must admit I have utterly ruined my figure. That dashingly romantic lift took you far less effort on our wedding night."

" _You haven't ruined anything_ ," Erik snapped, hard and fierce. "I'm going to rip his spine out."

Charles bonked him on the nose lightly, like a misbehaving pet, and then wagged a finger in front of his husband's startled face. 

_"No eviscerations._ It sets a dreadful example for the children."

"I'll just kill him a _little,_ " Erik said, wild around the eyes, with something deadly caught in the edges of his grin. "It won't last. It never does, the son of a bitch is worse than roaches."

" _No,_ love. Remember your promise to me."

"'Until death do us part' never said anything about _his_ death--"

"Not that one. Remember what you promised when we first learned I was expecting the twins?" 

"... _scheisse_."

Charles tugged gently at the quivering hand that had fisted itself tight in his sweater, and smoothed Erik's long-boned fingers over the vulnerable curve again. 

"You promised me backrubs and tummy rubs _whenever_ _I want them_ ," Charles said, fond and smug at once. "So. Keep rubbing -- oh! Oh, yes, there, that's lovely."

"Fine. I'll kill him later," Erik grumbled, both hands carefully occupied with rubbing. 

Snuggling into his husband's chest, Charles trailed a fingertip through the rain-streaks on his wet leather jacket. 

"I can demand _quite_ a lot of tummy rubs," he said, far too sweetly for the mischief dancing in his eyes. "You'll notice that I have a more than ample quantity of tummy to rub. In fact, I'm sure I can be even worse than puppies when I really put my mind to it."

Staring around at the fact that there were four little kids and as many teenagers who were calmly cutting up sheets of blotting paper while listening to their homicidal psychopath of a father talk about premeditated murder while the pregnant fruitcake sat on him to squash the impending bloodspatter as he chattered obliviously about puppies and rainbows and shit, Alex leaned over to Hank for some kind of desperate last-ditch sanity check. 

"What the hell? How are you guys _used_ to this?" he whispered urgently. "I mean, does your dad rip people's spines out on a regular basis or something?" 

"Oh, no, of course not!" Hank said at his usual volume, startled. 

Alex had been about to breathe a sigh of relief, except that Hank _kept talking_. 

"Not _everybody's_ spines, I mean. Just Logan's. Logan's bone structure was replaced with adamantium, you see, and he's got the most remarkable abilities of recuperation. We're not sure if anybody _could_ kill him. And Father's talent is in manipulating metal, so he couldn't get a grip on other people's bones-- at least, I don't think he could. Although I suppose there _might_ be a high enough mineral content in bone marrow, what with the heme and the red blood cell generation? I wonder if he's ever tried to--"

"Hank. Sweetie. This would be a good time to shut up if you want your boyfriend to _not_ vomit on your house slippers," Raven said.

"Oh. Um. Sorry, Alex."

Erik's head snapped around again. 

"Alex?" he said, low-pitched. "You're the little punk who hurt my son?"

Alex knew, with a sudden stunning clarity, that he was about to die.


	4. The perils of kitten taming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I don't deal with intentions. I deal with results," Erik said._
> 
> _"But Alex has been quite the gallant young gentleman this afternoon," Charles insisted. "In fact, I shudder to imagine what will happen when the two of you realize exactly how much you have in common. Especially as regards your opinions of Logan's behaviour. The imagery is somehow both charming in the abstract, and horrendous in the particular..."_
> 
> In which Wanda Explains It All With Punching And Also Kittens, Darwin has the mercy Emma didn't and clues Alex in on Charles' other mutation, and Charles decides _everyone_ needs a Time Out.

Somehow, impending death even overrode the nausea from Hank's lecture on biological homicide. Apparently the world held some small mercies. Very, _very_ small mercies, and he'd have traded back the imminent death for the nausea if he could have, and holy fuck even his own brain was babbling like Hank now. Maybe Hank always lived on the edge of a panic attack. Actually, that would explain a whole hell of a lot and why the fuck was he thinking about that when he was _about to die--_

"Father," Hank said, and reached over and took Alex's hand -- in front of _everyone_ , which made Charles light up like a sunrise but Erik glare like he might actually be able to stab someone to death with his eyes, and if anybody _could,_ it would be him -- "Father, it's all right," Hank said, without so much as a stammer. 

_"He hurt you."  
_  
"I know," Hank admitted. "I didn't understand before, and I don't think Alex did either, so we were... stumbling around each other, kind of. But I don't think he wanted to hurt me, or... I don't know..." He fumbled to a halt, turning pleading eyes on his papa.

"I'm sure he didn't," Charles said, with more blind optimism than common sense, twining his fingers between his husband's. 

"I don't deal with intentions. I deal with results."

"But Alex has been quite the gallant young gentleman this afternoon," Charles insisted. "In fact, I shudder to imagine what will happen when the two of you realize _exactly_ how much you have in common. Especially as regards your opinions of Logan's behaviour. The imagery is somehow both charming in the abstract, and horrendous in the particular..."

"When did I ever give you the impression I'd let someone like me within arm's reach of _any_ of our children?" Erik muttered.

"Honestly, love. You are a better man than you would ever admit." Charles turned a devastatingly sweet smile up to him; he even fluttered his lashes, and then bit his lip to keep from snickering at Erik's incoherent little growl.

" _Papa,_ " Angel said with a sigh. "You can't flirt your way out of _every_ problem in the world."

"Well, perhaps not, but can you blame a person for trying? It's such _fun_. And he makes the cutest little nose-crinkles when he's about to laugh--" 

" _Charles,"_ Erik growled.

"In any event, the salient opinion here is not ours, but Hank's." And then Charles turned that brilliant megawatt-smile on his eldest son, who looked a bit like a deer trapped in the headlights of the oncoming freight train of cheerfulness. 

"Hank, dear, what do you think? Have the two of you worked through your, er, initial difficulties?"

Under the redoubled force of his papa's blinding delight and his father's unrelenting glare, Hank fidgeted with his glasses and collapsed into a blather of geekspeak.

"Actually from a sociological perspective it's rather fascinating; athletic culture has very few overlaps with, er, nerdly outcast culture, and according to my studies I think he was attempting to forge an interpersonal connection by establishing a nickname of the sort that athletes would put on jerseys and sign in yearbooks? But since I've never been on a sports team I was unfamiliar with the cultural overtures of teasing and back-slapping, and first I reacted badly and then Alex's friends reacted badly and then-- I'm sure I could produce a paper on it for you, if you'd allow me a few hours to correlate the cross-references and--"

Alex put his free hand over Hank's mouth. It seemed only merciful to put him out of his misery.

Erik had a completely unnatural ability to keep boring eye-holes in someone's head without even blinking. 

"Anything to say for yourself?" he snapped.

Alex had a feeling _please don't kill me_ would just not impress mister black-leather death-on-the-prowl. He swallowed hard around a very dry throat, and somehow managed not to whimper. 

"I'm a dick, and I wouldn't let me around my son either," Alex managed. "If I had a son, which I totally don't. But if I did I wouldn't be good enough for him. It's just that -- Hank's so damn _nice_. I don't know how to handle someone who's so nice. I'm not used to people being -- kind, or smart, or thoughtful, and still wanting to talk to _me_ for some reason. I don't get it. But I... uh... I want to learn. If it's all right."

"It's like Wanda and her little admirer," Angel put in, grinning. "Didn't you ever tug on a cutie's pigtails when you were in school?"

"Not when I was in high school," Erik said, dry as glacial ice.

"Did I mention I'm a dick?" Alex offered, without much hope.

"Hank should punch him," Wanda declared. "Then they'd be even."

Erik looked like he was about to burst with pride. Charles looked like he'd just swallowed a porcupine the wrong way round. 

On the whole, though, Alex thought he could probably live with disappointing Charles if it meant he got to _live._ Getting hit by Hank sounded a lot less permanently fatal than finding out what Erik had in mind for people who hurt his family.

"You can hit me if you want," Alex offered to Hank.

"What? No!" Hank spluttered. "Violence doesn't solve anything! And besides, you're littler than me."

" _Thank_ you, Hank," Charles said, almost pathetically grateful.

"I could punch him," Wanda said, all bright-eyed enthusiasm. "Hank doesn't like hurting people, Vati, so I could do it for him. And I'm lots littler than Alex, so it's okay if I punch him."

Charles buried his face in both hands; Erik gave a sharp bark of laughter.

" _Unsere kleine Walküre._ Good girl, Wanda, defending your gentlest brother." 

"We're going to have words about this, I see," Charles sighed.

"I'll get the popcorn," Raven said, ever pragmatic, and handed Kurt to Darwin as she went to dig in the cupboards.

"Forget the popcorn, bring the Scotch," Emma called after her.

"But you're _not_ like Bobby Wilson," Hank murmured, clutching Alex's hand between his own. "His parents take him to the library every week, and he's never had to wonder where he's going to sleep at night or who's going to feed him or if anyone cares whether he goes home. You haven't had that for ten years."

"Jesus, Hank," Alex scowled, embarrassed. "I'm not a charity case."

"Of _course_ you're not. I'm saying you deserve better than being shipped around from house to house like nobody wants you, because it's _not_ that nobody wants you. We want you. _I_ want you. You're -- you're my little wild kitten, Alex, you need a warm place to stay and people to live around who _don't_ all hit and yell--" 

Despite both hands over his mouth, a faintly strangled snerking sound made it out of Sean's throat anyway. Darwin kicked him in the shins, even though the corners of his mouth were twitching despite his own best efforts at politeness.

"I mean it," Hank said. "You're fierce and scared and alone and I kind of want to snuggle you except you might claw my face off, but, I mean, that comes with kitten territory, so as long as I'm careful -- that is, would you mind being my kitten? Because I really don't want to have to hit you and I'm pretty sure you already know how to make paper airplanes. But I want to be your family. I want us to be your family. We're all crazy, I know, I'm sorry about that, but we're my family and we're ...home. Um."

"Your _kitten,_ Hank?" Alex asked, because he couldn't help himself. "Seriously?"

Shoving up his glasses again, Hank squared his shoulders and said, "Call it my vengeance for 'bozo,' then."

Sean lost it, dissolving into howls of laughter and thumping a fist weakly on the table.

If it ever got out at school that he was _letting Hank McCoy_ call him _his kitten_... 

Alex's brain tried to twist itself inside out to get away from the sheer horror of the results. It would start with gutting any hint of badassness he'd ever had, lay him wide open for mockery and fists and worse, and he might well be wishing for Erik's glare of death as a flashback to the good old days before his reputation went straight to hell.

...and it was going to be worth it.

Alex picked up Hank's hand, licked a broad stripe over the palm, and while he was flailing and sputtering, said, "Mrrrrow."

Yep. That blush there? _So_ worth it. 

He shoved his head into Hank's panic-jittery hand, angled around a little, and said, "Scratch."

" _What?_ "

"Your kitten is claiming cat rights. Starting with the petting. Scratch my ears, human peon."

"You couldn't have chosen a puppy for your metaphor, Hank?" Erik grumbled, but with his lap full of Charles and his hands dutifully rubbing, Alex almost felt ...safe around him. Or at least not in _immediate_ danger of death. It felt ...really, really weird.

"Well, you have to house-train puppies, Father," Hank said, "and I'm fairly sure Alex would object to having newspaper laid down and--"

" _House-training?_ He's not staying past supper, is he?"

"About that," Charles said, rubbing his fingertips together lightly.

Alex flinched a little; he couldn't help it. "Oh. Yeah. Right. Would it be okay if I left my books here and got a ride back to town? I could pick them up later, or Hank could bring them to school or something, or--"

"But you don't have anywhere else to go," Hank protested.

"Well, yeah, but that's not your problem," Alex said, feeling his shoulders hunch up.

"Oh, don't be absurd, you're staying right here," Charles said. "Speaking of which, Emma, if I might impose upon your professional skills for a very great favor--"

"All taken care of," Emma said, buffing her nails on her collar lightly. "Lucille faxed the forms to your study twenty minutes ago."

"Marvelous. Thank you, my dear."

Erik turned _the stare_ on Charles. 

Charles blinked wide, sincere eyes at him.

The silverware on the table started to shake.

Across the room, the microwave beeped; Alex nearly jumped out of his skin. Raven just pulled out the popcorn and shook it into a big bowl, munching away.

"Pass that over," Sean said, and Raven obliged. He grabbed a fistful, then offered the bowl to Alex. "Popcorn?"

"...the hell?" 

"Suit yourself," Sean said. Then he tossed a kernel and tried to catch it in his mouth.

Alex looked around, decided dragging Hank and the kids behind the refrigerator to hide really wasn't a good idea due to Erik and metal and also homicidal psychotic breaks, and wondered whether the kitchen table was sturdy enough to survive having major household appliances dropped onto it.

"Shouldn't we be running?" he whispered helplessly to Hank. "Or at least get the little kids out of here before the screaming starts?"

"What? No, that's not -- they don't-- they'd never _hurt_ us," Hank said, hunching his shoulders up. 

"Vati an' Papa don't want to scare us when they're fighting, so they never fight out loud," Ororo whispered.

"But... what... why _popcorn?_ "

"Oh, that's right, you haven't been here long enough to really see him in action," Raven said. "Pro tip, kid: Don't let Charles look you in the eyes when he's got a point to make."

"Dude is the unholy Zen master of puppy eyes," Sean mumbled around a mouthful of popcorn. "We think it's his tertiary mutation."

Charles ducked his chin and looked up at Erik through his lashes, his big blue eyes luminous with earnest sincerity. 

A fork shot across the room and imbedded itself in the cheerful weekly schedule on the cork board. It nailed itself into the forehead of a bright yellow smiley sticker.

"Why are we not running?" Alex croaked.

" _Hush._ Studying here." Raven grabbed herself another handful of the popcorn, watching the interplay of emotions flickering across both men's faces like an avid fan at a tennis match.

Erik added a scowl to the glare. 

Charles bit his lip, brow faintly furrowed, all but radiating hurt and disappointment and dismay. His eyes were wet and shimmering and sad enough to drown in. 

The effect was devastating from clear across the room; even Erik's iron core staggered under the impact at point-blank range. He bit off a curse in German and looked away for a moment, marshalling his strength. 

The fork in the corkboard quivered. So did Charles' bottom lip. 

Several more utensils shot across the room and stabbed into the walls.

Fuck it. Alex knew he was dead one way or the other. Might as well make the best of it in the meantime. 

He squeezed Hank's hand on one side, reached over and grabbed himself some popcorn on the other side, and Sean flashed him a grin and a thumbs-up. 

Munching triggered another thought beyond the hysterical mental litany of _I wonder whether it hurts more to get smashed by flying appliances or to get your bones ripped out by the marrow_.

"What do you mean, tertiary mutation? What's his secondary?" he whispered, because as long as he was going to die anyway, he might as well die with his curiosity-itch scratched.

Sean snickered. "Dude, you've got eyes." He sketched the silhouette of Charles' belly in the air.

"Okay, so, on what planet is a man getting pregnant _not_ his primary mutation?"

"The twins are only six," Angel whispered back, rolling her eyes. "Papa didn't know he could, before that."

That... made a disturbing amount of sense, actually. It wasn't like being pregnant had a halfway point; you either were or you weren't. You couldn't exactly practice, or work your way up to it. 

So if they'd always known Charles was a mutant, then he had to have had some other mutation before he found out about the whole getting-pregnant thing, so that meant... what _did_ that mean? Looking at him sitting there in his husband's lap, the only obvious weirdnesses were that belly and the inhumanly staggering force of _cuddly-and-harmless_ he was emitting like some kind of cuteness-radioactive teddy bear.

Darwin, meanwhile, was giving Hank the stink eye. Darwin wasn't as good at it as Erik. But then, nothing sane was as good at it as Erik.

"I know you're kind of hopeless when it comes to social stuff, Hank," he said under his breath, "but seriously, your boyfriend is just as much a hormonal teenaged guy as the rest of us, and he _doesn't_ know about Papa's other mutation? How could you _not_ tell him?"

"I didn't know where to start!"

"I'm fine. I'm totally cool with your dads having all the kids they want," Alex said, a little desperate not to be seen as any more of an ass than he already was. "I mean, the entire _universe_ is out to break me today. Your dad being pregnant is just kind of the icing on the insanity cake of my screwed-up life--"

"Not the 'pregnant' part," Darwin said. "The 'world's strongest known telepath' part. I mean, damn, Hank, I'd sure have wanted to know that before I got into a shower with a boyfriend and--"

A lethal-looking array of cleavers and chef's knives shot out of the knife block and pivoted unerringly toward Alex's pants at the same moment that Hank howled, _"I DIDN'T get into the shower with him!"_

_All right, TIME OUT,_ Charles said, and everything stopped.


	5. Vati's Little Teapot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"'When he gets all steamed up, hear him shout,'" Erik sang, and earned himself another cuff across the head. "What? Tiny, round, adorable, happiest when brimming full of tea? Produces eardrum-shattering shrieks under precisely calculated provocation? No help for it, love; you're my little teapot, and don't you forget it."_
> 
> _"It is the kettle that sings when boiled, you Continental barbarian." Vexed, Charles added, "It is also a mark of profound rhetorical weakness to lose an argument and, amid your desperate groping toward victory, devolve into using a pregnant person's snugly-stretched and extremely ticklish tum to your own shameless advantage!"_
> 
> In which Alex finds himself being kidnapped and dragged off by the Care Bear press gang, Erik's little teapot gets all steamed up, Hank is traumatized by Charles unloading the mental basket of plushie STD viruses, and Logan watches _My Little Pony._

It was impossible to hyperventilate when you weren't in charge of your own breathing, Alex realized. But it was obviously still possible to have the rest of a panic attack, because everything else was falling apart in shreds. Shame scalded his skin like fire. He _needed_ to run away and hide until he wasn't -- wasn't _himself_ anymore, wasn't a foul-mouthed asshole who'd been fantasizing about Hank in front of his sweet polite _mindreader_ of a dad--

_My dear boy, I've known Logan for a decade now. Let me assure you that you are a fresh-faced young choirboy in comparison._

Charles was very still in Erik's lap, his eyes lightly closed, two fingertips to his temple, a slight furrow of concentration creasing his brow. For some reason, he was tracing four-four time on the tabletop with his index finger. No one else in the room was moving, other than bizarrely synchronized blinks. Alex couldn't help another hot surge of desperation, needing to run away so that he didn't have to contaminate Charles with his horrible thoughts--

_There is_ nothing _horrible about your thoughts,_ Charles told him firmly. _I do remember being a teenager. Yes, I am distracting you from contemplating the details of your fantasy life, because we'll both be happier if I don't overhear the particulars...  
_  
...oh, thank _God_. __

_As for profanity -- I assure you, you cannot possibly surprise me. Unless you happen to speak Cantonese, which is one of the few that Erik and Logan lack between them, and which I've heard is really quite marvelous for creative cursing -- ah, yes, blathering again, very sorry. At any rate, Alex, my dear boy -- you_ don't _fantasize about torture; you_ don't _exult in others' pain. You have a conscience, and empathy, and compassion. I have known sociopaths, you understand. You are_ not _filthy or horrible in any way. I swear that to you on everything I hold sacred._

Except Alex _was_ horrible; he'd hurt Hank, he'd almost burned down three houses, people kept throwing him away, they wouldn't be so desperate to get rid of him if he wasn't--

_\--you are NOT a bad person, Alex. You are extraordinary. Unique, and talented, and, yes, frightened. It's dreadfully easy to hurt people when you're frightened. Believe me, I've done it myself._

_Okay, now you're bullshitting me,_ Alex said, because he could _not_ imagine Charles hurting anybody, even by accident.

Even though Charles had his eyes closed outside, Alex had the distinct mental impression of a startled blink. 

_Alex, you -- you're truly not afraid of me?_

_No offense, sir, but how could_ anyone _be afraid of you?_ Alex said, thinking about fluffy round-bellied tweed-tabby kittens with big blue eyes.

A rush of emotion rocked him -- shock-terror-horror-revulsion-disgust aimed like blades at telepaths-mindreaders-brainfuckers-- _stayoutofmyhead don'tcomenearmeyoufreak outoutoutgetawaygetOUT--_

_\-- oh bloody hell,_ Charles' own voice said distractedly, _I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to remember that. I'm so very sorry--_

_Is that from someone here?_ Alex asked, appalled. _Is that Logan? God fucking dammit, I'll hold him down myself while Erik rips his spine out for you._

_Oh, no! No, not Logan, just -- old memories. Just a moment, I need -- I'm holding twelve rather emotional conversations at once, I need fewer chords' resonance. Emma, dear, could you -- oh, thank you--_

Emma rounded up the children and most of the teenagers, urging them toward the door despite a string of grumbles. 

Charles added aloud without missing a beat, "And no one gets out of bath time. There is _nothing at all_ wrong with showers, with bathing, or with getting wet. No matter how much you dislike water. No matter how much you'd rather be running around. And no matter how much kittens and comic books don't want to get wet. Are we all _quite perfectly_ clear?" 

"Yes, Papa," the little kids groaned in not-quite unison.

"Sorry about that, Papa," Darwin added, a bit sheepish. "I'll ride herd on bathtime for you."

"Thank you, Darwin, that would be very much appreciated. Besides, it's near time for the little pony cartoon -- and no, Pietro, no one has ever died of excesses of girliness." 

"Or of sitting still for twenty minutes," Erik added sourly. "Run laps around the sofa if you have to." 

"Yes, Vati."

Erik had resumed his tender massage, his hands moving in soft, soothing curves over the rise of Charles' heavily distended belly. 

The knives were all still hovering midair and quivering a bit, as though he hadn't decided what he should stick them into next.

Alex tried to think himself very, very small. Very small and harmless and hard to aim knives at. 

Charles glanced toward him and smiled. His eyes were incredibly blue, brighter than the summer sky.

_He shan't stick those into you, I promise you that. And, really, the best way to keep your thoughts under a telepath's radar, so to speak? Join a crowd just like this. Especially a crowd of children. Think of it like birdsong. Have you ever had to try NOT to hear that one bloody bird outside the window hours before dawn?_

Alex couldn't keep himself from an exasperated snort at that memory: a rosebush outside his window at his third foster parents' place, some madly overambitious bird singing its goddamn lungs out at 3:57 in the morning...

_Yes, precisely. But it's more difficult to accidentally distinguish that one bird's voice from the others amid the chatter of the entire aviary._

_So how the hell-- ohshitI'msorry -- I mean, twelve conversations at once? How do you DO that?_ Alex asked, seriously impressed.

Again he got that mental impression of a startled blink, followed by a quick burst of emotion -- _surprise-pleasure-embarrassment-gratitude-delight._

_No, I'm serious,_ Alex thought. _Seriously, I have a hard enough time in the cafeteria when there's five or six people all jabbering across the table at once. How the hell do you DO that? Is it something to do with being a brainiac with three doctorates or something?_

_Not precisely; it's -- well -- have you ever played in an orchestra?_

The explanation unfurled itself in Alex's mind like a rose in slow bloom: violin strings sharp under a child's small soft fingers, warm waxed wood trembling with song under his chin, one careful wobbling line of notes; and then two staves for piano, or six for a chorus. 

Then the page shifted into an orchestral conductor's score, hundreds of notes striping across the page on dozens of staves, all playing different lines at once -- _and then you take the motif and let everything flow into jazz!_ Charles told him enthusiastically. Improvisation over swinging rhythm, variations spiraling around wherever the flow takes each player, passion and emotion and humor and sorrow and all the richnesses of life, flowing through the musicians' minds and hands.

_Everyone has their own instrumental line,_ Charles said, smiling into his thoughts. Pietro was, of course, the piccolo, racing over and around the rest of the music; Wanda was the flute, bright and assertive. 

Erik had always been a French horn to him, metal's strength and certainty channeled through an artist's human passion and grace, pitch-nuanced and gifted with far more range and expression than brassy piston-driven trumpets. 

Emma's mind spoke in silver bells, a carillon-range shimmering crisp and precise and powerful, even when whisper-soft. 

Raven ranged among the woodwinds, shifting her tone and her mood to swing the day's tune. 

Hank played double bass, deep and strong and resonant, and capable of so much more than the wider world acknowledged.

The big kettle drums held the rhythm of autonomics together when he took control of a group -- pulse, breath, nerve and blood and sinew, an intricate dance woven over an unshakable core he could never lose, so long as he could feel his own pulse. 

It was _terribly_ important not to lose track of anyone's pulse, when the world had to stop.

_Holy fuck,_ Alex thought, amazed. 

_And you're still not frightened of me?_ Charles asked in a very soft voice, wistful and tentative.

_How could I be?_ Alex asked, bewildered. _You're, like, some kind of amazing super-genius. You know exactly what you're doing; it's incredible. God knows I wish I had that kind of control-- half the time I blow shit up when I sneeze! Why aren't_ you _afraid of_ me? _Why don't you mind me being here around your kids? I'm a violent fuckup with a rap sheet taller than I am--_

_No, you're not,_ Charles said firmly, and stood him in front of a dizzying array of mirrors, reflecting him through his family's impressions. 

Raven's Alex was a smart-mouthed, opinionated jock who might possibly have enough nerve to deal with their lunatic family, and fantastic (though possibly suicidal) instincts when it came to dealing with admantium-clawed assholes' sense of humor. 

Emma's Alex was painfully young and naive, wary and defensively sharp over an insecure core that she could have eviscerated with a few crisp words if she'd been in a worse mood; but he had a kind heart under the immaturity and profanity, and she'd rather save up her edge and unleash her full powers of verbal destruction on the perpetrators in her next assault and battery case.

Angel's Alex was absolutely batshit crazy for even thinking about taking on Logan, possibly with a death wish, which would be a serious waste of potential because the boy was smoking hot and Hank was a lucky, lucky bastard.

Alex squawked inside his own head, even though the impulse didn't carry all the way down to his vocal cords; he was pinned somewhere between _Jesus Christ, I'm hearing this from her DAD_ and _She really thinks I'm hot?_

_She'd tell you the same if you asked her,_ Charles said, a bit sheepish, _which is the only reason I feel I can share these impressions with you. I can't share Hank's reflection, you understand, because that is a discussion that the two of you have not yet had with each other. But I do feel it is not betraying a trust to tell you that he regards you much more kindly than you do yourself. So do the children--_

Neal's Alex was really tall (though not as tall as Hank, because nobody was as tall as Hank), and really brave, and really cool. Alex needed to stay, because then Neal wouldn't be the only one who made fire anymore (and water was icky and cold and wet).

Wanda's Alex was in need of both a good punching and a set of kitty ears for his Halloween costume, because Hank definitely needed to bring Alex along when they went trick-or-treating because Halloween was the best holiday ever on account of candy. 

Ororo's Alex was overlaid with glimmering impressions of velvet and steel, a courtly gentleman who stood up for her papa when Mr. Logan was teasing too roughly and upsetting him. She was very glad Alex had been there, since Vati hadn't gotten home yet. Maybe Vati -- who was the best and gallantest knight ever -- would take Alex as his squire.

(Pietro's Alex was mostly a blonde blur. Running was more interesting than _anything.)_

_Let me guess,_ Alex tossed back. _Your husband's Alex looks like this._

He sketched a mental cartoon of a chalk-outlined crime scene with a lot of blood and bunches of knives driven through the crotch of the body-tracing, and startled Charles into a laugh. 

Erik gave him a peculiar look; Charles smiled up at him, fond and loving, and he settled down again. The knives, however, didn't.

_Erik is very protective of us, but he would never injure a child,_ Charles told Alex earnestly. _Intimidation, however... well, you've already encountered his opinion of the value of intimidation._

_And the value of making people who want to date your kids think he's out for their balls on a platter?_

_Yes, that too, I'm afraid,_ Charles admitted, with the shadow of a sensation of rubbing at his forehead.

_I. Uh. I really would feel better if he'd put the knives away._

_I'll work on that later,_ Charles said. _Right now I'm more focused on persuading him to let us foster you._

_\--SAY WHAT?_

Even in the outer world, Charles flinched a little. The hovering knives jerked in the air before Charles hastily folded his hands over his husband's.

"Just kicking," he lied brightly, guiding Erik's hand up and to the left: "there, feel that? Ooof. Goodness, someone's restless today."

The granite-sculpted line of Erik's jaw softened slightly; he touched where Charles led him, then pressed more firmly, a deep, intimate caress. 

A moment later, Erik lit up. His whole face transformed when he smiled, delight shining through him as clear as day despite all the thundercloud-brooding before. His fingertips drummed a teasing reply to the movement he'd felt; then he shifted his hands and patted another spot for the baby to kick and push at Vati's playful, affectionate touches. 

Safe within the circle of Erik's arms, Charles traced an adoring fingertip over the curve of his husband's cheek, then followed it with a swift kiss.

_Someday he's going to realize how conveniently timed those little kicks can be, and then I'll be in a right pickle,_ Charles admitted to Alex, sheepish. _I'm shameless, I know._

_WHAT THE HELL,_ Alex said, with what he considered remarkable calm under the circumstances, because it was like watching a fluffy teddy bear lay out plans for a major bank heist or something. 

Charles pulled off the sweet harmless innocent look so well that the thought that he might secretly be some kind of evil mastermind had never even occurred to Alex. But there he sat, deviously manipulating his scary homicidal husband with telepathically-nudged baby-kickings, which was somewhere between evil and genius. Most likely both evil and genius at once.

_Plus_ he'd just been talking crazy shit about going off and _fostering_ Alex, and that was _such an incredibly bad idea_ but he was talking like it was _already settled._ Everybody needed to just hold the fuck up already. There was no _way_ he could possibly let Charles go off and do some crazy shit like that. 

Except he was starting to wonder how anyone ever _stopped_ Charles from going off and doing crazy shit. So far, Charles had been proving himself to be really disturbingly good at getting crazy shit done and steamrollering over the rest of the universe with the application of blunt force trauma applied through charm and cuddles--

_My dear boy, charm and cuddles hardly qualify as blunt force trauma._

_You've never watched yourself run over somebody with those eyes, have you?_ Alex said. _You're like an inescapable act of God or something, except fluffier, and, uh, rounder._

_Thanks awfully,_ Charles said, a bit miffed at the mention of his roundness.

_Also, you're bugfuck crazy if you actually want to foster_ me. _Also also, for God's sake, haven't you ever heard of_ asking _people whether they want to have themselves basically kidnapped and dragged into the Care Bear press gang?_

_I do try not to overhear our guests' thoughts without warning them, but strong emotional conflicts are a bit like shouting,_ Charles confessed, sounding as guilty as a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar. _I truly couldn't help noticing how very much you wished you could stay with us, even though you never meant to ask._

_Of course I wouldn't have asked!_ Alex retorted, a little crazed. _Have you got any idea -- okay yes, you're in my BRAIN, you can't NOT know what kind of shit I'm capable of, you've got to know there's no way I could just STAY here with all these little kids and all your expensive stuff and-- and everything!_

_But you can, Alex. You should,_ Charles insisted. _You need a family like us, a family who understands what it means to be a mutant, to be still learning your gift. I'd asked Emma to come and start the paperwork for us as quickly as she could, because there is always a dreadful amount of paperwork to be gotten through. Honestly, she'd anticipated what I would ask her from the moment she saw you and your books; she knows me too well, even without factoring in our telepathy._ With a rueful mental smile, he added, _We'd simply underestimated the amount of persuasion we'd need to apply to the two of you, you stubborn boys._

Tangled up in Alex's thoughts, the incredulous _And you didn't ask your husband first?_ was fighting tooth and nail with _And you didn't ask me first?_

_If I'd asked you, you would have tried to insist that you were too dangerous to stay with us, wouldn't you,_ Charles said, with a telepath's absolute certainty.

_That's because I AM!_ Alex howled. _And now it's my fault your husband's mad at you, because you didn't ask him before you went and did crazy shit, and probably because he thinks I'm too dangerous to be around you, and he's RIGHT--_

_Erik doesn't think you're dangerous,_ Charles assured him. _And he certainly understands about children with sudden, urgent needs. He brought Neal home to me one day after work; he hadn't even had time to call first, but I understood, just as Erik understood when I brought Angel home. No, I'm afraid Erik's upset is a bit more... paternal._

_Not because I'm a mutant freak. Because I was an ass to Hank,_ Alex realized, his heart sinking. _Oh shit. I can't ...I can't undo that. I can't have_ not _done that._

_When you called him those things, Hank was ...distraught. For some time,_ Charles told him, startlingly gentle, when he ought to have been furious at Alex for hurting his son. _Hank's always had such difficulty with self-esteem, and -- well, the opinion of one of the most popular young men in the school carried much more weight with him than the reassurances of his parents, who were, he presumed, biased on his behalf._

_Jesus fucking Christ, why the hell do you even think you want me here?_ Alex wailed, utterly miserable. _I'm such a dick, your husband's right, you ought to throw me out on my ass--_

_You aren't listening,_ Charles said, softly. _Let me say this again. For all that his father and I have loved and supported him over the years, Hank still struggles to see anything of value in his own brilliance. He sees his gentleness as weakness, and sees his difference as cause for shame. Rather than believing his parents' well-intentioned reassurances, he pays much more attention to the opinion of one very popular and attractive young man whom he desperately wishes to impress._

_Which is why you ought to throw me out on my ass for hurting him--_

_Which is why,_ Charles interrupted firmly, _you are the best person in the world to heal the hurt you have caused him. He_ listens _to you, Alex. He cares what you think of him. If you think of him kindly, if you value what you see in him, then let him know that. Out loud, in plain language, because sometimes we need to hear such things in simple words -- yes, even telepaths. We all like to be told when we are loved._

Alex... really wasn't used to being able to fix things when he fucked up. Most of the time what was left after Alex fucked up was a smoking crater and the fire department and furious, terrified people who never wanted to see him again -- and that was when he was _lucky_. When he was unlucky, there were ambulances and police. He didn't know how to fix anything. No one had ever wanted him to try before.

_Destruction is dreadfully simple, isn't it?_ Charles said, mild but completely unflinching. _Destruction is easy, swift, thoughtless. It is always harder to create than to destroy. Harder still to mend what has been broken. What I ask of you is not easy, Alex, but I believe it is worth the effort. I believe_ you _are worth the effort._

_Can you fix me?_ Alex asked, in the grip of a sudden, irrational hope. _You can control people's brains, right? I'm so fucked up -- can you fix me so I don't lose my temper and say stupid shit and blow shit up and-- can you make me not ME anymore?_

_Oh, Alex. No. I would never change what you are. You have the strength you need, and the kindness to desire others' joy for them; all that you lack is practice. And the experience of mending your relationship with my son is your own responsibility, your own duty -- not something I would ever 'repair' with my little mentalist's tricks._

__Charles' eyes were bright and blue and infinitely deep, and at the bottom Alex _saw-heard-felt_ a core of blazing, unshakable faith. Charles' absolute certainty in his own visions burned as bright as the sun... and as merciless.

_Yes, my confidence -- my arrogance, I suppose -- is one of my own innumerable flaws, I'm afraid,_ Charles admitted. _But do grant me the benefit of a certain degree of experience. I have seen the depths of hundreds of thousands of souls, in all their glory and madness and depravity. I assure you, Alex, you_ are _capable of far greater things than you know._

_But I don't know how to fix anything,_ Alex said, feeling small and dirty and miserable under the illumination of that brilliant, relentless light. _How do I learn how to stop fucking everything up when that's all I've ever done? I don't even know where to start._

_We'll help you,_ Charles said, warm and welcoming. _We'll teach you. We all teach each other so very many things here. Not how to be perfect, of course; no one can manage that. We'll teach you how people forgive each other when we make mistakes, and how to be gentle with each other. That's how a family is meant to be._

Charles' mind was full of golden sunlight streaming through dusty rafters, and crackling hay beneath knees, and the soft plush-and-padded feel of a kitten's paw carefully curling around a breathlessly eager fingertip, tiny clawprickles barely catching at the skin. The warm velvet fur he thumbed lightly atop the kitten's paw was a fragile little luxury, and so was the wince-and-giggle of having a lapful of warm, purr-rumbling kittens delightedly kneading needle-sharp little claws straight through otherwise-sturdy jodhpurs. 

_Let's do keep disinfectant and bandages to hand while we're learning,_ Charles added, rueful, and with it came a time-blurred, now-wistful amusement at his mother's long-ago outrage that he'd gotten bloodstains on a new riding uniform before he'd even worn it to the gymkhana _._

_You ride horses too?_ Alex asked, somehow surprised that he'd been surprised, because anybody with a house like this had to be crazy rich. Crazy rich people did things that needed polo shirts: polo, hostile takeovers, stuff like that.

_I've not ridden recently, of course,_ Charles said, glancing down at his swollen belly. _It wouldn't be safe for the little one, not to mention that I'd need to hire a crane to hoist myself into the saddle as of late. If you'd fancy a turn, though? Ah -- yes you would, and Alex, here is your very first lesson to practice. When you realize you want something, don't begin with denying it, or blaming yourself for a possible imposition. Just ask._

That sounded ...dangerous. If people knew what you wanted, they could control you with it, could dangle it in front of you and wrench it away and...

_Oh, Alex. You and Erik, honestly._

Charles wrapped him up in a fierce mental hug; Alex could _feel_ it uncannily clearly: the warmth of his arms, a gentle hand rubbing between his tense shoulderblades, the ticklish scratchiness of the woolen sweater, the difference in their height, even how Charles' snug round baby-bulge would press against him, firm and full and ripe. 

Charles mind-hugged like someone who had given a lot of hugs. Like someone who'd given so many hugs that he knew exactly what hugs felt like, all the way through.

Alex _wanted_ to know what hugs felt like that thoroughly. 

But, dammit, he was _not going to cry_ in front of mister black-leather knife-stabbity death on the prowl.

_Black leather knife stabbity-- oh good gracious, Alex,_ Charles said, sounding caught halfway between tears and incredulous giggles himself. _Erik would -- well, no, Erik_ wouldn't _be offput in the slightest. He'd be quite appallingly proud of himself. Well. What to do, what to do-- oh STOP that--_

_Stop what?_ Alex asked, confused.

_Sorry -- my husband is being an utter prat, and-- OH--_

In the outside world, Charles suddenly squeaked. He bit his lip hard, eyes squeezed shut, cheeks pinked with embarrassment.

Both of Erik's hands were hidden by the edge of the table, but that toothy sharp-edged grin was way the hell too smug.

_Sir, if your husband is having brain sex with you right now, I am SO UNBELIEVABLY out of here._

_No! Good God, no, just--_

Charles was rapidly losing his desperate attempt to cling to composure. He wriggled in Erik's lap, shuddering with the effort at control, straining on the verge of--

\--shrieking with laughter. (Oh thank _God,_ the back of Alex's brain added. _)_

" _Bastard,_ " Charles gasped, and then shrieked again. "Erik, you _wretch!_ You _know_ how s-sensitive-- God-- especially now--"

Erik was whistling under his breath. 

Erik was whistling _the teapot song_ under his breath, what the _actual fuck._

Charles smacked him over the head, just firmly enough to ruffle his hair; Erik caught his hand and kissed the back lightly. 

Hank had turned the color of an overripe tomato and was trying desperately to ignore the entire universe, all his considerable attention focused like a laser on interleaving comic pages with blotting paper.

"What the hell is going on?" Alex said, and hoped it hadn't sounded as plaintive as he thought.

"My husband is a right bastard," Charles said, still panting for breath.

Erik flashed a really disturbing grin, and started singing. 

"'Vati's little teapot, short and stout' -- _ow,_ dammit, have you been _sharpening_ that elbow?"

"I prefer vertically challenged, thank you."

"'When he gets all steamed up, hear him shout,'" Erik sang, and earned himself another cuff across the head. "What? Tiny, round, adorable, happiest when brimming full of tea? Produces eardrum-shattering shrieks under precisely calculated provocation? No help for it, love; you're my little teapot, and don't you forget it."

"It is the _kettle_ that sings when boiled, you Continental barbarian." Vexed, Charles added, "It is also a mark of profound rhetorical weakness to lose an argument and, amid your desperate groping toward victory, devolve into using a pregnant person's snugly-stretched and _extremely ticklish_ tum to your own shameless advantage!" 

"Lucky thing I'm not taking a rhetoric class from you, Professor." Erik bent his head and rumbled into Charles' ear, "Shall I demonstrate what else I love groping toward?"

" _FUCK NO,_ " Alex said, in a perfectly calm, collected, and not at all hysterical tone of voice.

" _Erik,_ " Charles said firmly, a bit pink around the cheeks. "Please. No traumatizing the children."

"Like you've got room to talk," Erik snorted. "What have you been filling Hank's head with? The last time I saw him turn that color, you were explaining sexually transmitted diseases with a basket full of _fluffy plush viruses._ "

"They're marvelous pedagogical aids," Charles said, with the righteousousness of complete confidence, or possibly complete insanity. 

"They're _absurd._ "

"In any case, I should think you would agree that it has recently become _quite_ important that Hank receive a more thorough grounding in the mechanics of safe homosexual intercourse than the woefully underfunded public education system has provided him to date--"

"Oh my God," Alex croaked. "Oh God, Hank. I am _SO sorry._ "

Even Erik's stone-sculpted severity had crumbled a little from a hit of unexpected sympathy for his poor son. 

"Charles," he said, with the corner of his mouth twitching. "Have you, in actual fact, been filling Hank's head with _illustrated and annotated gay sex diagrams_ while the little dickhead he's been desperately crushing on is _sitting right next to him?_ "

For all that Charles was some kind of supergenius who could keep track of what a dozen people _had been_ thinking at the same time, he seemed to have an astonishing lack of ability to guess what people _would start_ thinking in response to specific (traumatic) stimuli.

"Well, yes! Was that wrong?" Charles asked, baffled. 

Erik made a barely-strangled choking sound, one hand over his mouth. Probably the only thing keeping him from laughing his ass off was the knowledge that Hank would never look any of them in the face again if he did.

Terribly anxious, Charles said, "Only I'd thought it quite vitally important that he receive a sufficient grounding in the principles _before_ rather than _after_ they initiate physical experimentation--"

_"Papa,"_ Hank whispered, slumped forward over the table, the towel-hoodie pulled up to try to hide his scarlet face.

"Jesus Christ, Hank, I am so, SO sorry," Alex breathed, wishing he knew where they kept the hard liquor around this place. 

Fuck that legal drinking age shit, the lawyers had obviously never taken extreme parentally induced trauma into consideration. Hank sure as hell was going to need _some_ kind of brain-scouring substance to obliterate the last hour or so. 

Charles shot a frantic look back and forth between them. 

"I hadn't planned to introduce you to the curriculum until you were more settled, Alex. You've had enough mental and emotional stress for the day, and -- and I certainly didn't _intend_ to traumatize either of you--"

"It is _never not going to be traumatic_ to have _your boyfriend's dad_ dump the gay kama sutra into your head via some kind of direct porn-injection brain-upload!" Alex wailed.

"...Oh." After a moment's thought, Charles offered, "Well, if you expect it's likely to be upsetting either way, would you prefer to have it done with?"

" _No!_ " Alex shrieked, and then wondered a little hysterically if he'd matched Charles' teapot-pitch. Kettle. Tea-kettle pitch. Whatthefuckever.

"But if--"

"No, Charles," Erik said firmly, putting a hand over his husband's. "Even I'm not that much of a sadist. Though I am pleasantly surprised to discover you have a vicious streak in you after all -- ah, _scheisse_ , no, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just teasing you, love. Shh. Let's go find the kids, all right? You, me, and Alex."

"But Hank-- oh. _Oh._ Right, no standing up at the moment --oh, _blast,_ I wasn't supposed to say that either, was I. Damn, damn, _damn._ " Charles looked absolutely heart-stricken. 

Alex was having a hard time dredging up too much sympathy for Charles, though, because Hank looked like he desperately wished he could curl up and die on the spot.

"No, you really weren't," Erik said, fond and exasperated both. He lifted Charles to his feet, steadying his uneven balance with strong hands; then he slotted the knives back into their block with an absent flick of the wrist. 

"Come on, punk," he said to Alex, offering Hank a small pat on the shoulder. "Let's go be somewhere else while Hank pulls himself back together."

Hank nodded faintly against the table, managing a small whimper.

"I really am terribly sorry, Hank--"

" _Later,_ Charles."

Erik led his husband and Alex through the maze of hallways toward the distant sound of the television. Charles kept drooping into a miserable little huddle of sorrowful eyes and trembling bottom lip, sagging into the supportive curve of his husband's arm, and Alex slunk along to the side like a dog dragging on his leash.

"How long do you think it will take Hank to forgive us?" Charles asked Alex in a very small voice.

"You know him better than I do, sir."

"But you understand teenagerhood better, I think," Charles murmured. "I hadn't -- I mean -- um. I am a very, very strong telepath. And... not nearly as strong an empath. I make ...mistakes." 

"Oh," Alex said. "Uh. Nobody's perfect, I guess."

"But I should be better than this. Hank needed me to be better than this." 

"Let him hide in his lab for a while, and apologize when he comes out," Erik said, with a certain roughly amused affection. "We all know you just can't help yourself when someone triggers your lecture mode on any topic even tangentially related to genetics. Including sex, obviously."

"Well. Always a bright side, I suppose -- I've gone and initiated a perfect case study for you in the mending of unintended hurts," Charles said, offering Alex a small, wan smile. "Nothing like teaching by example, after all. You'll get to watch your degreed and highly experienced instructor put the vital principles of oral foot extraction and abject groveling into practice quite soon."

"Charles, our son gets perfect scores in every physical science, including biology," Erik said. "No matter how much he might wish otherwise, he can't possibly have missed that you know enough about how to have sex to have gotten yourself pregnant. Repeatedly."

"Oh God, mental images," Alex whimpered, scrubbing both hands over his face.

"He'll get over it sooner or later." Erik dropped a kiss into Charles' rumpled curls, then opened the door to the television room. 

It was one thing to see Angel and Raven as avidly focused on My Little Pony as the girls, but _Logan--_ yep, that was Logan.

Logan was intently glaring at a screenful of some pastel cartoon horse mocking some other pastel cartoon horse, and he was _growling._

Privately, Alex thought that some god out there had just answered a whole lot of his prayers at once. 

He must have been grinning a little too much. Erik shot him a sidelong glance, and then the corner of his mouth quirked in something that might have been approval if it had been on anybody else's face.

_Do be kind,_ Charles said, probably to them both. _Raven tells me it is an astonishingly addictive show._

_He said you were fat!_ Alex said, outraged. _Even I'm not that much of an asshole!_

(Well, okay, strictly speaking, he _had_ been that much of an asshole. But in his own defense, he'd stopped thinking that as soon as he found out better.)

_To be fair to Logan, I am fat._

_You are NOT FAT._

_My own husband compares me to a teapot on a regular basis, Alex._

_Well, fuck him too. Except not while I'm listening,_ Alex added hastily. _You're just -- you're -- round. And for a really damn important reason! Anyway, if Logan's allowed to be an asshole about your, uh, your bump? Then I'm allowed to be an asshole about him and girly cartoons._

_Assholery is neither a transitive nor a distributive property,_ Charles said primly.

_Okay, I don't even know what you just said, and waitaminute what the FUCK, the nasty purple thing just FRIED someone,_ Alex said, startled by the television _. Are they allowed to do that? They're pastel, for Chrissake, aren't there rules about pastel?_

_Quite addictive, Raven said,_ Charles replied, sounding entirely too smug about it too.

_Jesus, is it dead? Tell me the pony isn't dead. Oh fuck, don't cut to commercial THERE, assholes--_

When the commercial break started, Erik called to the television-enraptured kids inside, "Your Papa needs cuddles."

"And you tell me _I'm_ a manipulative scoundrel," Charles said, even as he was promptly swarmed about the knees and all but bodily dragged over to the sofa.

"Ororo, love, I'm fine, your Vati likes to exaggerate. No, I'm not upset by the poor little pony on the telly. No, the baby isn't hurting me either. Yes, I promise. Yes of course I'll sit with you all, just -- I need a bit more room to maneuver lately; I should hate to squish anyone--"

With the grin of a woman who'd been there herself, Raven helped Charles maneuver his ungainly girth into the devouring depths of the sofa. Then she briskly pulled off his shoes, lifted his heels onto the coffee table, and tucked a pillow under his ankles. 

Since Wanda and Ororo had both piled into his lap the moment he stopped moving, Charles couldn't even protest beyond a half-hearted glare.

"Don't glare at me; you know you're going to need help to haul your rotund self up when you need the bathroom," Raven said, with the smug, smug voice of experience.

"You take _far_ too much pleasure in the embarrassing discomforts of my extremity," Charles grumbled, but he was already stroking Ororo's hair where she'd cuddled into his roundness and pillowed her head on top of his full, ripe belly. 

Neal looked noticeably distressed at the fact that between Ororo, Wanda, and Charles' own considerable girth, his papa didn't have any lap room left. 

Charles bit his lip for a moment, glancing over at the sofa's other full-grown occupant.

'Uncle Logan' made some obligatory grumbling noises, but he scooped Neal onto his lap and shifted down so that Charles could reach far enough to curve a gentle hand to the distraught little boy's cheek.

"Yes, Neal, I'm certain Twilight Sparkle will be just fine. Yes, I'm quite certain. Absolutely positively. Why? Because they have _thousands_ of toys left to sell, my darling. Trust me; she'll be just fine by the end of the episode."

Erik looked over at Alex, with a broad, fierce grin that showed way the fuck too many teeth, and grabbed him by the elbow to drag him out of the room.

_Hook, line, and goddamn sinker,_ Alex realized a minute too late, as Charles cast a startled look over his shoulder toward them both. 

Charles had just gotten himself thoroughly trapped in a sofa by his own heavily gravid girth, even before the extra layer of kids had piled into his lap. 

Alex hadn't tried to stop the kiddie swarm. Hell, he hadn't even tried to slow them down.

Hank was probably desperately jerking off in the shower and hating his life.

That meant there was nobody left to stop Erik from dragging Alex out to the woodshed with the axe. Or wherever the hell else he probably planned on making sure Alex never needed Charles' brain-sex-download thing, on account of having had his _dick chopped off_.

" _Be NICE,_ " Charles called toward them both, in the moment before the door latched shut between them and Erik hauled him away.


	6. Life Lessons from CSI: Mutant Squad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"He was all British about it, he just sat there going 'never mind me sitting over here being humiliated, everyone just shut up and sit your asses down and drink your tea so we can at least pretend like we're civilized and everything's cool and shit.'"_
> 
> _Erik arched an eyebrow._ "Charles _said that."_
> 
> _"Pretty much. Except, you know, in Charles-speak," Alex muttered._
> 
> In which Alex uses television logic to argue against his own maiming, hears a certain uncomfortable familiarity in his ranting about why Logan is a jerk, and decides to apologize like a man. Or at least, like John Wayne.
> 
> TW: One thrown punch from Erik that Alex asked for aloud. (Whether or not he should have is next chapter's debate...)

Charles, Alex realized, was both a 'gentleman' in the classical sense and a sincerely gentle man. Sure, he hadn't _needed_ to put Alex through the Inquisition on account of that whole brain-reading thing, but he _could_ have. Alex wouldn't have blamed him if he had. But instead he'd gone out of his way to be understanding and compassionate and -- and _nice,_ when Alex sure hadn't done anything to deserve Hank's parents being _nice_ to him.

Erik was nothing like Charles; Erik made absolutely clear exactly where Alex stood in the hierarchy of Erik's universe, which was somewhere between roaches and smoked-out cigarettes to be crushed underfoot. 

Which really was more what Alex _knew_ he deserved, as well as much more what he'd expected from the outset. But Charles had knocked him off his usual game, and now he was paying for having let down his guard.

Erik hauled him outside, stopped him under the overhang, lit a cigarette, and went straight for the jugular.

"Show me."

"I _can't,_ " Alex said, hating that he was panicking already. "I -- it's -- I need the sun, it's been raining all day, I burned it all off this morning and-- and anyway you don't want me shooting off this close to your house, I've got _no_ control. But, I mean, if you've got any old barns you need burned down or something--"

"No." Erik took a long drag on his cigarette, just _staring_ at him.

Alex shifted from foot to foot, looking down at his shoes.

"I... I can try to make sure I burn off out in the woods. Make sure I don't have a charge anywhere near your house. There wasn't anywhere big enough in town, all those houses and power lines and shit, but -- you've got that big lake, I could try to--"

"Your powers aren't your problem, and you know it."

Alex nearly swallowed his tongue.

"If you were any other mutant kid, I'd have been happy to bring you here," Erik said. "You need someone like Charles to help you learn control. But I don't want _you_ here. You hurt my son, and you didn't even need your powers to tear him up inside."

"I'm sorry," Alex whispered.

"Not yet you're not," Erik said, colder than steel. "But you will be."

_Charles? CHARLES?_ Alex thought a little desperately. _I don't actually want to DIE out here, Charles--_

"My husband is a soft-hearted fool who thinks that everyone needs a second chance to hurt our family. And then a third and a fourth, just in case they weren't hurt badly enough the first time." 

Erik flicked the ash off his cigarette idly; the fire at the tip burned red-hot. 

"Do you think I'm a soft-hearted fool as well, Alex?"

"N-no, sir."

"Charles and I have very different definitions of mercy," Erik mused, leaning against the pale stone pillar that held up the archway, ignoring the gusts of cold rain that spattered them both. "He thinks it's merciful to keep you here in this house with Hank, to let you fuck with his brain some more. I think that's not merciful at all. What do you think?"

"I... I don't know, sir."

"For a man of science, my darling husband has a lousy grasp of physics. _For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,_ yes? Why does Charles think keeping you here for that is merciful at all? I would have let you run. I would have let you leave, if I were to give you my kind of mercy. Do you want my mercy, boy?" 

"S-s-sir...?"

Erik blew a stream of smoke toward the stormclouds, and then leaned forward. 

"You can run now, Alex. Or else you can face the law of physics. For each time you've torn up my son's heart, I'm going to tear up yours. Equal -- and opposite -- reaction."

With a quick, sharp twist of his wrist, the bumper wrenched itself off Hank's car and twisted into a viciously hooked spear.

Sheer gibbering terror snapped something in the back of Alex's brain.

His knees gave out, and he slid down the wall of the house and landed with a thud. He opened his mouth to beg for his life. 

He really, _really_ had been intending to beg for his life.

But when he opened his mouth, what actually fell out was an utterly disbelieving, "You are _completely full of shit,_ you asshole."

Erik's mouth twisted savagely. "You want to say that again, punk?"

"You _are!_ You're full of shit!" Alex insisted, his voice cracking high on the edges of incredulous hysteria. "You're married to a goddamn _telepath,_ motherfucker." 

Erik's eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed. 

"You're not going to cut me open _this_ close to your house. It's fuck all to do with me; you wouldn't do that to _him_. Especially not now. Not in his condition," Alex said fiercely. "You're not going to walk back into that house and look him in the eyes like that, with a kid's blood on your hands when you pat his baby-bump. If you were _that_ fucking crazy, he'd have known it. He'd never have married you to start with."

One corner of Erik's eye kept twitching, and his fingers had left imprints in the chrome of his deadly-looking car-spear.

"I get that you hate my guts, dickwad," Alex said, pressing both hands against the cold wet concrete to keep them from shaking. "The feeling is one hundred percent mutual. But I _know_ you don't hate me more than you love Charles. I'm not worth that much to you. _He_ is."

Erik spun on his heel and threw the chrome spear halfway across the yard; it crashed into the base of a huge stone fountain, and clattered its way to a stuttering stop. He stared out at the yard, and took another long drag from his cigarette. Then, finally, he crouched on his heels at the base of the stone column, _looking_ at Alex.

"Now what, shithead?" Alex muttered, because really, after all that, why the hell not.

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" Erik muttered, plowing his free hand through his hair. "I'd thought you'd have been smart enough to run."

Alex managed a cracked laugh, and thunked his head back against the carved stone. 

"I'd thought _you'd_ have been smart enough to have watched _CSI: Mutant Squad_. Jesus. Even the _stupid_ psychopaths know to get outside the telepaths' range before they start in with vivisections."

"I don't think Charles has a limit to his range, when it comes to his family," Erik said, looking up at the lights shining through the windows of the mansion. 

"Yeah, well, I didn't know that. But if Detective McKinsey can get a read on a perp all the way across Central Park, then I _know_ Charles could get a read on me on his own doorstep. So. Yeah."

Erik glanced over at him, and quirked a brow. "Are you actually lecturing me on how to become a _better criminal?_ And you think this somehow makes me _more_ likely to let you into my home?"

"I don't know about _better,_ but hell, let's at least try for _plausible._ Mrs. Jenkins in English class told us all about willing suspension of disbelief and literary shit like that, you know? At least make an effort." 

That little deadly twitch at the corner of Erik's eyes was back in force.

"Don't get me wrong, you've got the scary psychopath face down cold!" Alex reassured him hastily. "But, seriously, your own _doorstep?_ Your _kids_ could be looking out those windows! You want me to take you seriously, at least haul me off to the woodshed or the boathouse or something next time, man." 

Erik made a noise. After a half-panicked moment's consideration, Alex thought it might have been meant for a laugh.

"You still haven't told me why I should let you back into my house."

"Fuck if I know," Alex said with a groan, leaning further away from the splatter from the gargoyle-sculpted rainspout. " _Nobody_ wants me in their house. Eight different foster families, I burned down three of their houses, why the hell Charles even let Hank bring me through the door..." Alex stopped himself and tilted his head a little, narrow-eyed as he studied Erik's face.

"What?" 

"I think maybe your husband's insane," Alex said, low-pitched. "He let _me_ just walk into your house. With all your stuff, and your _kids_ , and the _baby_ \-- he'd be shit at dodging right now! What the hell was he thinking? Maybe having all the voices in his head drove him over the edge? For fuck's sake, he _married YOU_. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of sanity there."

Erik's mouth twisted like he'd just bitten into a lemon... but he didn't say a word in protest.

"Holy shit, _you_ think he's insane too," Alex breathed.

"I didn't say that," Erik snapped. "He's brilliant, and loving, and kind, and so -- so damned _gentle_ it scares me sometimes. This world isn't gentle. He's too bright _not_ to see that. But he just goes and _does_ things, he throws himself into his visions like there's no way he could ever fail, or fall, or be hurt..."

Erik gestured helplessly, then took another drag of the cigarette. 

"He lives in a different world than the rest of us. I don't know how he looks at the world and sees the things he sees. He's somewhere else, somewhere I can't follow the flight of his mind. But here, in this world, I would do _anything_ to keep him safe. And Hank reminds me so much of him that it terrifies me." Sourly, he added, "And you remind me too goddamn much of myself."

"Seriously? You seriously don't want me dating your son because he reminds you of your husband and I remind you of yourself?" Alex stared at him. "Have you got any idea how fucked up that is?"

"Charles has pointed it out, yes." Erik ground out the butt of his cigarette as though he held it a personal grudge. "I should never have told him to go ahead and get that damn psychology degree."

"You're the one who married a genius. You get to deal with it when he's smarter than you like."

Erik glared at him. "You're here because Charles is on a one-man crusade to rescue every rabid menace that looks vaguely wet-kitten-shaped in the tri-state area. I can't _actually_ slaughter you because Charles and Hank would both get upset. And you're too damn stupid to run. What else am I supposed to do with you?"

After a moment's consideration, Alex offered, "Want to kick Logan's jerk ass to the curb? That's a bonding experience I could get behind."

Erik blinked. Then he scrubbed both hands down his face, muttering something that sounded like "too damn much like me." 

"Well?" Alex asked, with a shaky grin. "How about it?"

"We actually need him around," Erik admitted, through clenched teeth. 

"What the fuck for?"

"He and Darwin are the only two with native telepathic immunity," Erik said tiredly. "When Charles goes into labor, we need someone who can stay with him and someone else who can drive, and he's too strong for Emma. We learned that last time." With a sly grin, he added, "So what did Logan do to you?"

"He was being a dick to Charles about -- about the baby. About his ...shape."

Erik eyed him sidelong.

"I _wanted_ to beat his face in, but nobody wanted to let me try," Alex complained, irritated and defensive about the fact that he hadn't been able to defend Charles the way he wanted, and now Charles' husband was sitting there judging him for it. "I mean, it's not like I wanted to horn in on your turf or anything, God, I'm not _suicidal._ Just -- he hurt Charles, and Charles just _took_ it, like he was used to it, and it pissed me off."

The little twitch at the corner of Erik's lips looked suspiciously like what might have been laughter from anybody else, too. "So Logan didn't do anything to you personally."

"That's the problem," Alex shot back, heated. "If he'd tried to pull shit with _me,_ I could've handled it. Hell, I'd probably have deserved it anyhow. But _Charles_ didn't deserve getting mocked for being all, all round and -- and soft." 

"Of course he didn't," Erik agreed quietly, still studying him. "That's never stopped bullies before, has it."

"Yeah, no. So _somebody_ needed to break Logan's face, except -- Hank was scared when I wanted to. Like, seriously scared.And Emma just _laughed_ at me!"

"And Charles blew it all off," Erik surmised, not really a question.

Alex nodded a little anyway. "He was all British about it, he just sat there going 'never mind me sitting over here being humiliated, everyone just shut up and sit your asses down and drink your tea so we can at least _pretend_ like we're civilized and everything's cool and shit.'"

Erik arched an eyebrow. " _Charles_ said that."

"Pretty much. Except, you know, in Charles-speak," Alex muttered. "Like tea is some fucking magical key to world peace and civilization. Like it didn't even _matter_ that Logan dicking around made him feel ugly and fat and ashamed. That asshole made Charles feel _ashamed_ of his _baby!_ I _still_ want to punch the bastard's face in for him -- oh. Oh fuck." 

He wasn't Hank's level of genius, but he was bright enough to hear something awfully familiar in the words that had been coming out of his mouth about thoughtless mockery, and careless hurts done to people who hadn't deserved to be hurt or shamed. About the fierce, angry need to protect someone who was gentle and vulnerable, someone who'd suffered from an unjust injury.

Alex rubbed both hands over his face, and looked up at Erik. 

"That's probably pretty much how you feel about me, because of Hank, isn't it."

"Pretty much," Erik agreed, stone-faced.

"...Shit." Alex scrambled to his feet, looked around, and dropped his hands to his sides. "Go on, then."

Erik tilted his head, not moving from his perch at the base of the column.

"Go on. Punch my face in. I deserve it just as much as Logan. ...Except, uh, hold on just a minute. Maybe we should go out in the grass? I kind of don't want to break my skull open on the concrete, that would suck." 

Alex jumped down from the landing and headed out into the grass, making a face at the icy bite of the rain. 

It took him a little longer than it should have to realize Erik wasn't following him.

"What are you waiting for?" Alex asked, trying not to shiver too visibly, because he didn't want Erik to think he was _scared,_ but he'd left both his coat and the already-soaked shoes indoors, and _damn_ the rain was cold.

Slowly, Erik unfolded himself from the base of the pillar and strode out into the rain after him.

"Were you trying to hurt Hank?" he asked, low-pitched.

"Doesn't matter what I _meant,_ " Alex said, keeping his chin up by sheer force of will. "Doesn't matter what Logan meant. What matters is they got hurt."

After a moment, Erik nodded slightly, and then _moved._

The next thing Alex knew, he was lying flat on his back in the soaking grass with his ears ringing and the whole left side of his face throbbing in pain. When he could blink his way back into focus, Erik was standing over him holding a hand out.

Alex's pride didn't want to let him accept, but his ears were still ringing and his balance was shot to fuck. After two embarrassingly failed attempts at getting his knees to go the same direction, he ended up taking Erik's hand anyway.

"You try that with Logan, you're going to break your fist on his face," Erik advised, keeping a grip on Alex's arm to steady him as they trudged back toward the house. "His skull's made of adamantium."

"Yeah, Emma told me." Alex gave him a wobbly grin. "Who said I was going to hit him with my fist? You've got to have a baseball bat or a two-by-four somewhere around here, right? Gotta even the playing field a little."

Erik gave a sharp bark of laughter, and slapped him between the shoulderblades hard enough to stagger him.

"This is your second chance. You don't get a third. You hurt my child again, and I _will_ take you out to the boathouse."

"Fair enough," Alex said, rubbing his cheek. "Got a baseball bat I could borrow?"

"Not enough metal." Suddenly, Erik showed off every single one of those wickedly sharp teeth in what might have been the deadliest-looking fang-smile Alex had ever seen. "I keep a steel shovel in the coat closet."

"Great. I'll take it."


	7. Pinned To the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Charles was (of course) dressed as Santa, seated in some ridiculously ornate historical hand-me-down chair, and all the kids were clustered around in their Christmas best -- except for the twins, and Alex realized belatedly that Charles' Santa-tummy had probably been all natural._
> 
> _Erik was standing behind his left shoulder, dressed in a sleek hunter-green turtleneck -- and Erik was also standing behind his right shoulder, wearing the most hideous maroon-and-lime-striped Christmas sweater in history, a pair of plush reindeer antlers, a light-up red nose, and a ridiculously smug grin._
> 
> _Raven had even managed to copy all those teeth._
> 
> In which a lot of pictures are pinned to the wall, and so is Alex, who decides Erik was actually the less dangerous of the madmen in charge.

They didn't say much to each other on the way back into the house. If anything, Erik looked kind of embarrassed, under the usual grouchy facade. Alex was actually pretty happy. He figured he'd finally decided to take responsibility like a man. Kind of like one of those old Westerns, John Wayne style. 

Erik handed Alex a ziploc bag full of ice water and left him in the kitchen. Knowing Hank, he'd probably barricaded himself into his home chemistry lab out of sheer humiliation, and it'd likely require someone who _couldn't_ be locked out to drag him out into public again.

Alex couldn't help wondering why Erik knew that cold water hurt less than ice or frozen peas on a face punch. He really couldn't imagine Charles ever hitting Erik in the face. Logan he could see trying it, of course; but given the metal in Logan's skeleton, he couldn't imagine him ever _landing_ a punch on Erik. 

Maybe Erik had been a street punk too? Maybe that was why Erik thought Alex reminded him too much of himself.

Although, Raven was pretty damn fierce, and if she'd gotten herself into a protective snit about her brother... yeah, he could see Raven planting one on Erik. Maybe when she found out he'd gotten her brother pregnant. Hell, he wished he could've seen _that_ shouting match. With popcorn on hand.

Alex really wasn't sure he could find his way back to the TV room, but he found the bathroom along the way, so he peeled off the now-soaked socks and toweled his hair as best he could, and then went exploring. Marble floors were damn slippery when your feet were bare and damp.

The first libraryish-looking room full of books didn't surprise him. The fourth (on the same floor) kind of did. 

Either that, or all of Charles' ancestors since the dawn of time had decided wallpapering with bookshelves was more fashionable than wallpapering with paper. 

Hank must have _loved_ growing up in a house like this.

Alex finally found the TV room by sheer luck; he'd expected to have heard the family chatter, but it was startlingly quiet, and Alex hesitated in the doorway.

The little pony show was over with; Logan had turned the channel to ice hockey and dialed the sound down to a faint murmur, and everyone else was sound asleep. Sean and Angel were curled up on top of a beanbag on the floor; Pietro was stretched out on the carpet a few feet away, as though he'd just flopped over mid-run. A bright blue Raven had snuggled up against Charles, who'd snuggled up against Logan, and all three of them were covered in kids.

Darwin was the only other one awake, scribbling notes from a couple of textbooks spread across a table; he looked up and put a finger to his lips with a grin, then beckoned him over, and Alex carefully tiptoed in.

"If you don't want a nap, you might want to head to the other end of the house," he murmured. 

"What, it's contagious?" Alex grinned.

"Pretty much, yeah." Darwin cast an affectionate look over at the puppy-pile of his family on the sofa. "Being pregnant's pretty exhausting, I guess, and the little kids are used to taking afternoon naps. So they get sleepy and nod off on Charles, and then Charles starts nodding off too, and then suddenly _everyone's_ out like a light. We think it's the baby; it's only been this past couple months when Charles is asleep, when he's not consciously buttoning everything down." 

"You mean his baby's a telepath too? Already? ...Wow."

"Don't say that around Hank; he bitches and moans about all the study time he's lost to surprise naps," Darwin chuckled. "It's like being slept on by a cat. Sleep rays of doom, resistance is futile and all that jazz. Unless you're Logan or me."

Alex nodded, and then was startled to find himself cracking his jaw on an enormous yawn. Which kind of hurt after the whole face punching thing, which woke him up a little, but still. Yeah. Contagious.

Over on the sofa, Charles furrowed his brow and stirred, restless and uncomfortable, and Alex guiltily wondered if his mental ouch had disturbed him. Raven snuggled closer to him with a sleepy mumble, and Logan absently reached over to scratch gentle fingertips atop the mound of Charles' belly.

"Ease up, little buddy, your papa likes his spleen," Logan murmured, running his fingertips lightly over the full round curve of him. "Kick me over here. I'm tough, I can take it."

Alex wasn't sure whether he suddenly wanted to hit Logan with a shovel less, or more. 

Why couldn't he have been all sappy and shit when Charles was awake, and kept his assholeness for when Charles was asleep or somewhere else or something? How much effort did that take, seriously?

_Yeah, and how easy was that for me? Why couldn't I have kept my assholeness for when Hank was somewhere else?_ Alex thought, angry with himself as much as Logan. _Maybe Erik's right; maybe Logan pisses me off so much because I'm too much like him after all._

A sudden click startled Alex and Logan both. Chortling quietly over the image of the cuddle-pile on his cell phone, Darwin whispered, "That's one for the wall!"

"You put that on Facebook and I eat your liver," Logan muttered. 

"Aww, cranky kitty is cranky?" Alex guessed, grinning from ear to ear.

"Fuck you, punk. Charles wants it kept _quiet."_

"Nah, I meant that wall," Darwin said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, and then took another picture of Logan's grumpy face just to make him growl.

Most of the pictures he'd seen in the hallways were enormous gilt-framed paintings, and Alex hadn't quite realized that the wall around the fireplace wasn't actually colored brick. Instead, someone had built a latticework of pale wood all around the fireplace, and they'd apparently been filling the spaces with casual photographs for years.

The kids were everywhere, of course. Snowball fights, halloween costumes, school plays; one particularly striking shot of a much younger Sean all in white, singing from a songbook at the front of a church, the sunlight sparking his hair into fire. 

Angel in an extravagant dress, laughing as she spun, probably her quinceanera. A younger Darwin with a very small Ororo in one arm and Neal in the other, holding them up so they could stare enraptured at the tiger on the other side of the glass at the zoo.

Not-even-teenaged-yet Angel and Hank with the newborn twins cradled carefully in their laps, breathless and delighted, Sean leaning so far over the back of the sofa to look that he could have fallen over. Much more recently, Wanda and Pietro staring intently at a tiny blue Kurt, fascinated and completely unafraid.

Most of the pictures of Hank were of the top of his head, with his nose in a book as he did something completely different (and, occasionally, dangerous) with the other hand. Cooking. Pouring milk not _quite_ over the cereal bowl. Attempting to fold towels (badly). Chopping a cleaver down somewhere in the general direction of carrots laid out on a cutting board. 

Emma and Logan were scattered through the pictures as well. There _had_ to be blackmail potential in the picture of a smirking Logan at a summer barbecue, white chef's hat perched crookedly on his head and a cigar clenched in his teeth, all the claws out, one hand skewered with bratwursts and the other skewered with hot dogs.

Apparently, nothing was off limits. Kids splashing in bubbles with little rubber ducks. Erik sprawled on the floor obliviously texting on his phone. Sleep-deprived or hung-over Sean staggering into the kitchen with bed hair and a completely dazed expression. A blushing Charles struggling to fasten his jeans around his enlarging waist, followed immediately by a badly blurred photo of a pillow that had been flung at the photographer.

It took Alex a while longer to realize that there weren't any _old_ pictures. No grandparents or aunts or uncles; the one black and white photo he spotted had been cut out of a newspaper, a picture of a solemn and tensely dignified young Charles in riding clothes next to a tall dark horse. 

There were pictures of Charles and Raven as children, but Erik only came into the pictures as a lanky scowling teen. Logan was always the same, except sometimes with different cigars. Probably different cigars. Some of those pictures were from years apart; surely that _had_ to be a different cigar.

Raven stood out at a glance when she was blue, but she wasn't always obvious. There was a series of shots where she was pink-cheeked and laughing and trying out every hair color imaginable (somehow including plaid); but sometimes Alex didn't notice her until he noticed that there was two of somebody.

He had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud and waking up Charles and the kids when he found a surprise-Raven in a Christmas picture. 

Charles was (of course) dressed as Santa, seated in some ridiculously ornate historical hand-me-down chair, and all the kids were clustered around in their Christmas best -- except for the twins, and Alex realized belatedly that Charles' Santa-tummy had probably been all natural. 

Erik was standing behind his left shoulder, dressed in a sleek hunter-green turtleneck -- and Erik was also standing behind his right shoulder, wearing the most hideous maroon-and-lime-striped Christmas sweater in history, a pair of plush reindeer antlers, a light-up red nose, and a ridiculously smug grin. 

Raven had even managed to copy all those teeth. 

The photographer had managed to trip the shutter exactly when actual-Erik had glanced over and realized what he was seeing, and the sheer appalled horror in his eyes was truly a thing of beauty. (Alex suspected it must have been Emma behind the lens.)

Alex had never wanted _anything_ as desperately as he wanted to be in those pictures. 

He wanted to push Hank's cereal bowl back under the milk for him. He wanted to join the ground crew valiantly defending the hedge-fortress against the devastating aerial snowball assault from Sean and Angel. He wanted to curl up next to Hank on the sofa and get swarmed by little brothers and sisters.

(He really, _really_ wanted to point and laugh at Erik the next time Raven pulled a fast one on him. Or Logan. Or, even better, _both_.)

He only realized his hand was shaking when the picture lattice rattled a little under his fingertips.

There was a picture of Charles in the hospital in one of those horrible medical drape things, enormously round with the twins, pink-cheeked with exertion and embarrassment both. Erik was sitting behind him, supporting him on the birthing bed; a blonde-and-cream Raven was holding his hand, and Hank --

Hank at eleven had been _adorable._ One of the doctors had lent him a lab coat and a stethoscope, and the sleeves were so much too long on him he'd rolled them up to the elbows. He'd been holding the bell of the stethoscope to Charles' abdomen, listening intently to the sounds inside, anxious and a little scared and trying so desperately hard to look grown-up and confident and reassuring for his labor-wracked papa. 

Alex really, _really_ needed to reach into that picture and hug him and tell him it was all going to turn out all right, that his papa would be fine and so would the kids and so would _he_.

"Oh dear God," a horrified Hank said from right next to Alex's ear; he jumped at least a foot straight up, then nearly knocked over a candlestick when he clutched at the fireplace mantel.

"What?" he yelped. "I didn't see any naked baby pictures. It's _cute_." _You were cute. You still are._

He wondered how badly Hank would take it if he hugged him right then, except that Hank had dug a pen light out of his pocket and caught Alex's chin and shone it straight into his eyes.

"Are you dizzy? Nauseous? Any ringing in the ears? Good pupil reaction, that's good, but you -- Alex, what _happened?_ "

"Oh, my face? Uh. Nothing, I'm fine." 

Except they'd been a little too loud between them; the sleepy tangle on the sofa was starting to untangle itself.

"Oh dear God," Charles said, in an uncanny echo of Hank, and started struggling to free himself from the sofa and the kids. "Hank, check his pupils--"

"I already did."

"I'm _fine,_ I bet it looks worse than it is..." Alex bit his tongue hard before he could add _actually he was really nice, he could've broken my nose if he'd wanted to but he didn't._

Unfortunately, biting his tongue didn't do much good around a telepath who was intensely focused on him.

All the blood drained out of Charles' face; he looked just devastated, like Alex had just shaken his faith in the man who was the foundation of his world, and Alex felt like shit for ratting Erik out. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to think that, can we just pretend you never saw that?" 

It was really damn hard to _not_ think. He couldn't shut up the little mental voice that chattered on about _what was I ever scared of? No way Erik was going to actually fuck me over with that thing when he knew he had to face Charles being disappointed at him afterwards._

Apparently the mental image of the car bumper hook thing had been a little too much. First Charles' jaw dropped open, and then every adult in the room flinched. 

Raven gave a startled giggle. Logan actually rubbed at his ear. "Damn, Chuck, I didn't know you knew half those words." 

Somehow, Alex didn't think Logan was talking about words like antithesis this time. Erik had probably gotten an 'earful' too. Fabulous. Another reason for him to hate Alex's guts. He had to try to run this off at the pass somehow.

"It's _okay,_ " Alex said, almost begging. "I'm fine, we just had some shit to sort out, I _asked_ him to--"

"You _what?"_ Hank choked, and now he looked just as devastated as his papa. "You _asked_ Father to hit you? _Why?_ "

_Fuck my life,_ Alex thought for the dozenth time that day, and wondered how Charles' kids got away with _anything ever._

"I was just messing around with you when I called you sh-- stuff," Alex said, rephrasing a little desperately on account of the roomful of curious little ears. "I didn't know I actually hurt you. And, I mean, Logan was messing around with Charles too, right? He didn't mean to hurt him either, but he did. And I totally wanted to punch his face in for it, except neither of you wanted to let me--"

"Like you even could, squirt," Logan pointed out, grinning.

"Doesn't change that I _wanted_ to," Alex said, trying too hard not to think about shovels in the closet, but Charles' eyes widened anyway.

" _Alexander Summers,_ you will _NOT."_

_Damn. Busted._ "Anyway, the point was, I knew your dads felt exactly like that, yeah?" he offered Hank anxiously. "They _love_ you, they had every reason to be pissed at me. Except somehow I don't figure Charles is much use when it comes to fistfights." 

Hank made a startled little squeak, obviously caught between loyalty to his papa and honesty. Raven snorted, and Logan let out a loud guffaw. 

"Kid's got you pegged, Chuck." 

Charles squirmed his way into sitting more indignantly straight in the sofa. "I _beg_ your pardon, the point here is that violence is _not_ the solution--"

"If you think violence doesn't solve anything, you obviously weren't punching hard enough."

" _Logan!"_

Alex could totally tell that if Logan had had a middle name, Charles would have laid it on him like a disapproving mom. Er, dad. Papa. Anyway, he was pretty sure Logan was older than Charles, but that didn't seem to make much difference to Charles' parent-voice reflex.

"Dude, I need more popcorn for this," Sean said, grinning at them upside-down over the edge of the beanbag.

" _Anyway,_ " Alex said. "Charles definitely isn't supposed to be getting all wound up and stuff right now, and fighting winds you up, so-- 'Vati's phone number,' yeah? I figured I owed your father one. And Wanda was asleep," he added lightly. He couldn't quite help the grin tugging at his face, even if it kind of hurt.

A still-sleepy Wanda blinked up at him. "Vati punched you for Hank?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Then she looked over at the television, and wrinkled her nose. "Uncle Logan, hockey's boring."

"Boring? _Hockey?_ What the hell are you _teaching_ these kids, Chuck?" Logan chuckled, thumbing the remote back toward the cartoons. 

"Not nearly as much as I'd hoped," Charles murmured, looking down at his rounded middle and Wanda snuggled against his side, then looking painfully away.

And now Alex _totally_ felt like shit.

Hank shot him the fiercest glare he'd ever seen from the big sweet-tempered nerd, and dropped to his knees by his papa's side. "That's _not_ true, Papa."

"I'm afraid it is," Charles replied softly. "My husband, my daughter, now Alex -- this is all my fault, isn't it? If I'd kept better control..."

"Bullshit," Logan said, almost kindly. "Not your fault the little tyke's got you all tuckered out. And definitely not your fault for flinching when some asshole like me pokes you with a stick."

"But I ought never have let any of this happen. I'm a telepath; I oughtn't have been sleeping at my post, far too literally. For you to think you _deserved_ to be hit -- for you to _ask_ , and Erik to _agree--_ "

"Hey, that's not your fault! I just -- I'm a lot more used to getting into fistfights than tea parties, sir. This whole place is pretty weird. And anyway, I'm totally not thinking about fists anymore," Alex tried to reassure him.

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Charles said in a distinctly pained voice, "Yes, I fear I must grant you that. But shovels are _not in any way an improvement_ , young man!"

"Shovels?" Wanda asked.

"Oh God, Charles," Raven said, and started laughing.

_"Shovels?"_ Hank asked, and his voice cracked high.

"Uh." Alex gulped, and said, "It was a bad idea?"

"How come?" Wanda asked, all bright-eyed demonic enthusiasm.

"You should never use a shovel in a snowball fight, Wanda," Charles said, barely missing a beat. "They're slow and heavy, and they take too much space to swing, and you could hurt one of your friends." Shooting a significant look at Alex, he said, "That would be simply dreadful, wouldn't it?"

Chewing on a finger, Wanda said, "What about my sand castle shovel?"

"No precision," Charles told her, all wide-eyed earnestness. "The physics of loose snow is appallingly difficult; you can't control the clumping or the fragmentation or even the trajectory really. Hand-shaped snowballs are much better; you need to compact the crystalline structure to provide sufficient mass to pick up a good velocity..."

...and Wanda was looking bored already. Okay, yeah, apparently Charles really was a genius.

"Shovels, huh," Logan said, giving Alex a sharp-edged grin. But he didn't have anywhere near as many teeth as Erik, so Alex wasn't as impressed.

"Wanda, darling, would you let me up?" Charles asked, stroking her hair lightly. "I need to start dinner soon, so that I have time for a conversation with your father before the prep for my online lecture."

Wanda wrinkled her nose up, and said firmly, "No."

Charles looked completely boggled. Raven choked, wheezed, and burst out laughing despite both hands over her mouth.

"I'll make dinner, papa," Hank offered gallantly. "You sit and rest."

"Ew. That's even worse," Pietro said from the floor, before he picked himself up and ran away from the prospect of Hank's cooking.

Miffed, Charles said, "It's my turn, and I'm perfectly capable--"

"Of _baking_ , sure," Raven chuckled. "But both of you burn every damn thing you put on a stovetop, and how you even manage that--"

"Baking is _chemistry_ , and I have two perfectly good doctorates! Baking is precise and measured and -- and _scientific,_ " Charles protested, indignant. "Cooking is some kind of arcane art form, even the knobs -- 'low, medium, or high'? What possible use is _that?_ There aren't any proper temperature markings, not even an approximation! And no two pans seem to carry the same thermodynamic properties, and--" 

"Yes, _Professor_ , we know," Raven said, with no sympathy whatsoever.

"Now if you'd let me cook over a Bunsen burner--"

"--and it'd take three days for one meal--"

"I could make macaroni and cheese?" Hank offered. "The box has got instructions on the side, and I didn't burn it too much last time..."

"Yeah, fuck that noise," Logan said. "I'm going for pizza. Who's with me?"

The resulting cheers were loud and enthusiastic. Even Darwin got up to join the expedition, much to Charles' betrayed dismay.

"Sorry, Papa, but there's some things even I can't adapt to," he admitted.

"Barbarians," Charles grumped, arms folded atop his bulge. "Food is not meant to be served on _cardboard._ It's not hygenic; it's probably not even safe--" 

"But it's tasty," Raven said smugly, making herself over into her city-going designer-couture blonde self with a sudden bristle-and-sleeking.

"Will _someone_ please help me out of this sofa before you all abandon me to the vulgar allure of grease and cardboard?" Charles asked, plaintive.

Unrepentantly laughing at him, Raven took one elbow and Logan the other, and they hoisted him to his feet. Raven slung an arm around his waist and kissed his cheek, and made sure he'd found his balance before she let him go with a playful pat to the tummy.

"Hank? Alex? You coming?"

"Do you want pizza?" Hank asked.

Alex _knew_ it wasn't meant for a trick question, not from _Hank,_ but something in the back of his head seized up sharply anyway. 

He didn't want to leave the house. He'd say something stupid again, he'd make someone else upset, and they'd realize how much they'd screwed up by letting him in at all. 

He didn't want them to leave him with a DCFS branch in the city and go home relieved that they'd dodged a bullet and had gotten rid of him while it was still easy. 

Charles probably wouldn't have let them, but they were leaving Charles here, and nobody else was crazy the way Charles was. Except for Hank, but he couldn't ask Hank to stand up for him against his _family,_ and he still didn't know why the hell Hank had even helped him in the first place, and... fuck.

Even when he thought he'd finally, _finally_ done something _right,_ even when he was owning his shit and taking his lumps like a man, he'd gone and upset Hank and Charles _again_ \-- they were better off without him, everyone was, it was just a matter of time until they realized it--

"Oh, _Alex."_

Then Charles was hugging him. 

Somehow, Alex hadn't expected him to feel so small, so delicate. He'd stretched up on his toes to be able to put his arms around Alex's shoulders, and his belly wasn't soft at all, round and snugly full and surprisingly warm. 

He smelled of fabric softener and sunlight and old books, and he was stroking Alex's hair like Alex was one of the kids, like Alex was one of his _own_ kids, and-- oh _fuck_ he was _not going to cry in front of LOGAN, goddammit--_

_Just breathe,_ Charles murmured, pouring peace through him like cool, crisp water. _You're going to be fine. You're safe here. I have you now, and I won't let go. I promise._

Time blurred on him for a few minutes; the next time he trusted himself to open his eyes, Logan and the others were gone, thank God. 

Hank, though -- Hank looked kind of wrecked.

"You're an _idiot_ ," Hank said abruptly, taking his glasses off and rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. "We aren't going to throw you out. You _don't_ deserve to get hit, or shouted at, or abandoned in the city! I never wanted you to get hit because of _me_. I feel sick. I don't know what to do. Don't _ever_ do that again, okay?"

"Charles told you?" Alex asked stupidly.

"Of course he did! You thought we'd leave you! And you asked Father to hit you! Why would you ever do that?"

"Because I wanted him to! I felt better afterwards," Alex said, blinking a little.

"Well, I felt worse! How would you feel about my father punching _me_ in the face because of _you_?"

...oh _shit._

Even when he thought he'd finally managed to do something right, he _still_ managed to fuck it up, of _course_ he did--

"Stop," Charles said, taking Alex's trembling fist between his hands and rubbing lightly. "I know this is all different to you, Alex. I'm proud of you for thinking of how Erik would feel when Hank was hurt. I really am. And you were very brave to ask him to settle things in the only way you felt comfortable with."

"But?" Alex asked shakily.

"No 'buts,'" Charles assured him, terribly earnest. "Another 'and' or two. We'll work on more coping strategies. And now that you've thought of how Erik's perspective was like your own, it will be easier next time to think of how Hank's perspective was like mine, won't it? I wouldn't have wanted either Logan or you to be hurt, you know." 

Scowling, Alex said, "Okay, I'll skip the shovel. I'm pretty sure he'll hurt my fist more than I'll hurt him."

_"Alex,_ " Hank groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. "It's not just a question of whether someone gets hit with a fist or a shovel!"

"Pickaxe?" Alex offered, smirking.

"Now he's teasing us," Charles told Hank, before Hank could completely blow a gasket.

"Seriously, guys, if you're going to hit the ceiling every time I get into a fight, you're going to need to stock up on the chill pills," Alex said, uncomfortable. "Are you sure you actually want to keep me--"

" _Yes,_ " both of them said, so fiercely Alex blinked.

"The problem isn't intrinsically about the fight," Charles said, gently. "The problem is that you thought you deserved to be hurt."

"I _did._ "

"No you _didn't,"_ Hank insisted. "And even if you had, asking my father to hit you in the face is not a reasonable and balanced solution!"

"Yeah, he's kind of scary," Alex admitted. "I guess it might've been more even if I'd asked your brothers, huh?"

" _No,_ " Hank groaned, running both hands down his face. "No, Alex. Just -- _no._ "

"What else was I supposed to do?" Alex demanded. "I said I was sorry, and you didn't believe me!"

"I didn't know you meant it! Why would you apologize to _me_?" Hank shot back, caught between anger and shame and guilt. "Why would someone like you ever apologize to me for the truth? You're popular, confident, athletic, you're everything I'm not. I'm a geek. I'm a loser. Everyone knows that. You were just pointing out the obvious--"

Alex only knew two guaranteed ways to shut someone up. One of them involved his fist, and that was never, _ever_ going to be what he did to Hank, no matter what.

The other involved grabbing him by the face and kissing him until he stopped squeaking. 

It took a while for Hank to stop squeaking. 

Alex would have been more than happy to keep persuading Hank with the thorough application of his tongue in the one way he knew his tongue couldn't fuck things up for him, but two thoughts flashed across his head.

One was that Erik probably _would_ take him out to the boathouse if he found Alex inspecting Hank's tonsils in the middle of the hallway, and the other was that Hank's _telepathic other dad_ was still _standing right there._

"Oh God," Hank squeaked, when he could breathe again. His face was approximately the color of an overripe tomato. "I really shouldn't give you a rhetorical pass on that particular variety of argument, but it was far more persuasive than it was eloquent. Mostly by virtue of, um, _intense_ distraction, which is a form of logical fallacy I really mustn't encourage you to pursue too far because the underlying philosophical dilemma remains unresolved, although it's a bit unnerving how much I _want_ to encourage you to, er, pursue. That line of thought. And, um, action. Oh God, I'm such a dork. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. Not to me. You're...oh, hell." 

Alex couldn't exactly tell him he wasn't a dork, because, uh, he _was._ But, apparently, Alex had a thing for dorks. Except he didn't want to say that out loud either, in case it was the wrong thing to say again, and he really wished he could just get back to doing better things with his tongue, because then it meant he didn't have to _talk_ about anything, so he wouldn't fuck it up.

Rubbing his temples with one hand and the pregnancy-strained hollow of his back with the other, Charles said, "I believe we are in need of another spot of tea."

Alex tried hard not to laugh. He tried a little too hard. He ended up choking and wheezing, and Hank thumped him between the shoulderblades. 

"Soda, then, if your American palate absolutely _insists_ ," Charles said, waving an indignant hand. "But I intend to keep your hands and your mouths alternatively occupied until we've come to a conclusion that is more verbal and less ...oral." 

Alex hoped he wasn't blushing as much as he felt like.

"And under the circumstances, no, the two of you are _not_ permitted to be grumpy at me for that particular turn of phrase." Charles said, with a wickedly insinuating quirk to his lips. That lascivious version of smug made him look a lot like his sister, except less blue. 

Hank made a little whimpering noise.

The grin broadened. And then he _licked his lips,_ which should have been illegal. "Or that slip of the tongue, as it were." 

"Oh, _God,_ Papa!" Hank groaned, a hand clamped over his eyes. "No. _Bad_ Papa. That was possibly the worst double entendre _ever_."

"Come now, Hank. A double entendre requires innuendo, ambiguity, not direct visual confirmation -- yes, all right. I know. You're teenagers. I fear you _would_ rather be hit, or perhaps even boiled in oil, than talk to your parents about your feelings. But you see, gentlemen, I'm afraid I do have an ulterior motive." 

"Oh, damn," Hank muttered. 

Charles looked very calm, very deliberate, and very, _very_ determined. 

Alex wondered if he should have start running when Erik had given him the chance.

"You do quite badly need to resolve some misperceptions, both of yourselves and of each other," Charles told them. "When I can encourage you to talk to each other, then that means there's no need for me to talk as well. But when you _don't_ talk to each other? Well then, one simply must fill the silence, mustn't one?" 

As they boggled at him, Charles smiled politely and sank the blade home.

"Do keep in mind how many fascinating bits of your thoughts I can fill any particularly awkward silence with. I believe you'll find choosing your own conversation much preferable."

"Jesus Christ, I think you're scarier than Erik," Alex said, and meant it. "At least he _bluffs._ "


	8. PredatorDad and the Library Minibar of Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Why is it that what I ask of you isn't like a man?" Charles asked, like he was going to start taking notes. "Because I'm pregnant?"_
> 
> _"No, dammit, of course not! You're just -- you're all _British,_ " Alex tried. "You wallpaper with bookshelves. You live in a goddamn castle, there's honest to God paintings all over, like some kind of museum, but it's your _house. _I bet there's a suit of armor or something around here. I bet you ten bucks."_
> 
> _Charles held up a finger to protest._
> 
> _Guiltily, Hank cleared his throat and pointed up toward the attic._
> 
> _Charles paused a moment, head tilted to the side; then he actually blushed, and fumbled for his wallet._
> 
> _"Well, goodness. I thought we'd donated it to the Met's Cloisters collection years ago. In my own defense, the armor is certainly not _mine_. It must have belonged to--"_
> 
> _"No, don't give me ten bucks," Alex said, a hand over his face._
> 
> In which Alex gets traumatically introduced to: Foodgasms, boozegasms, something kinda like wet French toast with mouse droppings and hot egg nog, Hank's dad's sex voice, and Hank's papa's doctorates. Oh, and his surname too.

It really wasn't fair of Charles to drag them into one of those rich-snob-library things and start making them a pot of tea from the goddamn _minibar._

Water always took too long to boil, even if you had what looked like the tea version of an Italian sportscar built into the wall over the minifridge, and seriously, who built a _minibar_ into a _library_ and stocked it with _tea?_

Well, aside from Charles. 

And possibly Hank, who would probably have rigged up his own personal Mountain Dew dispenser with a gallon of syrup and the compressed carbon dioxide in the school chem lab if anyone had left him unsupervised long enough. 

But _still_. 

Charles was puttering about with spoons and sugar cubes with silver tongs, cups and saucers and all the trappings of a tea set that looked like it cost more than Alex made in six months, all gold and cream and elegance. 

Then Charles claimed the expensive-looking leather armchair by the head of the coffee table, which left the antique velvet sofa for Hank and Alex to sit and squirm and not-quite-but-maybe touch, just along the thighs. Only Alex was _not_ thinking about touching Hank's thighs in front of his prim and dignified and _telepathic_ dad, and seriously, this whole 'sit down and pretend to talk like socialites in the massively overcivilized library-thing' thing was _not fair._

"It's not a 'library thing,'" Charles said, mildly. "This is my study. I thought a measure of privacy would be important."

"Okay fine, it's a study, whatever. Smoking lounges, whatever floats your boat, but seriously, _who the hell_ stocks a minibar with _tea?_ "

Charles' eyes were definitely laughing, even though he kept his face mostly straight. 

"The children do come and explore the wilds of their papa's bookshelves, you realize. And on particularly stressful days, one does rather need to distract oneself from wistful thinking about my father's excellent scotch on the top shelf, which can be easier to manage when one keeps excellent tea straight to hand."

"'Straight to hand' meaning 'after twenty minutes of pfaffing around with the parts'," Alex muttered. "Do we have to talk _that_ long?"

Charles closed his eyes for a moment, running a hand down his face. "Believe me, at the moment the scotch _does_ hold a not inconsiderable allure. However, since none of us are currently permitted to get ourselves obliviated? Tea, and conversation."

In a very quiet voice, Hank said, "I thought you wouldn't mind being around me for twenty minutes."

"Jesus _fuck_ , _THIS. THIS_ is why," Alex groaned, knotting both hands in his hair. "I should just _never talk_. Whenever I talk, shit like this happens! I hurt people, I break everything, I don't belong in a house with a fucking _tea minibar_. I should just _go_ \--"

" _No,_ " Hank said, horrified. "I didn't mean it like that! I'm sorry -- please don't--"

"I'm the one who's sorry!" Alex protested, miserable. "I'm always the one who fucks up. I don't even know why you want me around--"

"Stop," Charles murmured, reaching over and catching Alex's hand between his own. "Alex, please. You've had an incredibly stressful day, you've been tossed into a charming madhouse, and now Hank and I are asking you to stop using some of the reflexes that have kept you alive and comparatively safe for most of your life. There's no way I'd expect you to handle this gracefully."

"Then why are you _asking?_ "

"I _am_ sorry," Charles said, heartbreakingly sincere. "I would wait, if I felt I could. Alex, it frightens me that you sincerely believed you owed Erik your pain. No one should expect to be hurt here. _No one_ should. That includes you."

"What the hell planet do you come from?" Alex said, and his voice cracked on something he hoped he could pass for laughter. "Seriously, what the actual fuck? People hurt each other all the time! You've _got_ to expect that!" 

"No, actually, I don't," Charles told him, unfalteringly polite.

"Look, I know you're pissed at me because I pulled your husband into it, but Jesus Christ, at least I understood what _he_ was thinking," Alex flared, unnerved by Charles' bewildering calm. "I fucked up, I admitted it, he hit me, we were _done_. Why won't you let me just handle this like a man and get it the hell over with?"

"Meaning, of course, that my way of handling things is not sufficiently like a man."

Alex blinked, and then dropped his head back to thud against the ornate wooden back of the sofa. 

"...This is why I should never fucking _talk._ "

"No, do please go on." 

"So I can dig the hole deeper? Yeah, that's a winning strategy."

Terrifyingly earnest, Charles folded his hands on his knees and leaned forward as far as he could with his middle so roundly in the way. 

"Why is it that what I ask of you isn't like a man?" he asked, scholastic and inquisitive, like he was going to start taking notes. "Because I'm pregnant?"

" _No,_ dammit, of course not! You're just -- you're all _British."_

Charles and Hank blinked in unison.

"You've got doctorates from Oxford," Alex tried, flailing a little for an explanation that he hoped wouldn't sound as completely stupid as he felt. "You wallpaper with _bookshelves_. You drink tea like normal people drink coffee."

"I beg your pardon. Normal people most certainly _do_ drink tea."

"Not the way you do," Alex said sourly. "You're like a knight or something. You live in a goddamn castle, there's honest to God paintings all over, like some kind of museum, but it's your _house._ For fuck's sake, you ride _horses_. Or at least you did before you got pregnant. I bet there's a suit of armor or something around here. I bet you ten bucks."

Charles held up a finger to protest. 

Guiltily, Hank cleared his throat and pointed upward, presumably toward the attic.

Charles paused a moment, head tilted to the side; then he actually blushed, and fumbled for his wallet. 

"Well, goodness. Erik says we actually still do; I thought we'd donated it to the Met's Cloisters collection years ago. In my own defense, the armor is certainly not _mine_. It must have belonged to-- well, never mind, the genealogy is hardly relevant..."

"No, don't give me ten bucks," Alex said, a hand over his face. "The point is, I don't know what to _do_ with that. All I know about knights and gentlemen is that I'm _not_ one. Kind of the opposite. But I thought it was okay, because I wasn't the only one? I thought I could just... play by the rules I knew, like Erik and Logan do, except you keep saying that's not good enough--"

"Oh, Alex, _no_." Charles reached out and caught his hands. "It's not what's good enough for me. It's what's good enough for _you_. It's not good for you to expect to be hurt. It's not good for you to hurt yourself, even when you ask someone else's hand to do it."

Exhausted, Alex said, "I was _fine_ , until you two freaked out on me. I just want to forget about it. What can I say to get you to just -- just _shut up?"_

Charles flinched back like he'd been slapped. Hank gave Alex an appalled look, then left him on the sofa in order to kneel by his papa's side and enfold him in a hug.

The electrochrome high-tech hot water thing sounded a primly dignified little bell, and its light turned green.

_I don't belong here. I should do everyone a favor--_

_No,_ Charles said into his mind, bright and fierce and determined, with sunlight pouring hot through the rafters and riding leathers and hay crackling in his thoughts. _No, Alex, you DO belong here. We want you here._  
  
"Right here, with us, and not out in the barn with the wild things," Hank added; Charles must have shared the image. "Domesticating kittens takes time, you know. Not just a couple crazy hours. It takes time, and patience, and gentleness."

"I'm tired, Hank," Alex murmured, his eyes stinging. "I just want this to be over with."

"All right," Charles said, and somehow he managed a smile to go with it. "We're done."

It hit him harder than he'd expected. A little numb, he said, "Okay. Could someone take me to the bus station, then?"

"Oh, God, _no,_ " Charles said, appalled. "I meant we're done with that _topic_. You asked, so we'll find a new topic. That's all I meant."

"...oh." 

Alex was really, _really_ sick of feeling stupid tonight.

Hank and Charles traded a long silent look, and then Hank moved over to the mahogany desk and dug around for something. Charles struggled out of the chair and moved over to the sofa next to Alex, putting an arm about his shoulders.

"It is entirely possible to talk for hours at a time on subjects that are not at all upsetting. I'm paid to do it on a regular basis, remarkably enough. I've been told the technical term for what I do is 'blithering.'"

"The technical term is _lecturing,_ Papa." 

"Ah, yes. Blithering is what one calls it when I do it on my own time."

Hank handed him a clipboard full of papers and a pen, then took the teapot over to the minibar for the hot water. 

...The _library minibar of tea._ Alex was never not going to be amused by that, unless 'disbelieving' or 'appalled' were among the options.

"It's a study," Charles reminded him, smiling as he paged through the papers and scrawled signatures here and there. "A library would have an organizational system that made sense to _other_ people. A study only needs to make sense to its, er, studier. Hank, is that a word?"

"Resident?" Hank offered. "Inhabitant, maybe. You'd live in here if Father let you."

"Excellent point! There, you see, Alex? Blithering. If you let us start on scientific blithering, Hank and I can go on for _days._ Though I should very much like to find a topic you enjoy as well." 

Signing his name on the last page with a flourish, he set the clipboard down and turned the high-beam smile on Alex. 

"I noticed some familiar titles among your comics collection. Do you happen to be current on the _Avengers_ titles? I'm afraid I'm at least half a decade behind; once the twins arrived, between infants and doctorates, well." 

"Yeah, I can see how a dozen kids and three doctorates would put a crimp in the free time," Alex said. 

"Oh, pish, not a _dozen_. Even with the twins we only had eight."

"'Only eight,' he says." Alex rolled his eyes. "Do you actually _sleep,_ or do you just hit pause or something?"

"We have wonderful staff; Mrs. McDonough is fantastically helpful with the children. And it's ever so handy to be able to mind-share," Charles said, all self-deprecating, boyish charm. "Still, I should love to know what happened to the two new cast members -- the enchantress and the silver-haired sprinter, a brother and sister pair?" 

"You know that's what they've got wikis for, right?" Then Alex blinked. "You mean the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. _Wanda and Pietro._ Does _Erik_ know you named your kids after comic book characters?"

"Really? Erik said they were family names. I'm sure it's entirely coincidental," Charles said, so earnest that Alex knew he was either completely sincere or lying through his teeth, but hell if he could tell which. 

Hank sat down on Alex's other side, tablet in hand, already scrolling through the wiki; Charles leaned forward and poured the tea, then handed around the cups and saucers.

Somehow a discussion of the likelihood of names like Wanda and Pietro coming from a Jewish family took a detour through statistical probability, then the difference between real-life probability and comic-book probability. 

And then they'd crossed the Geek Vortex of No Return and gotten themselves sucked inexorably into the black hole of TV Tropes.

At some point, Charles and Hank started scribbling notes on the tablet about comparative power scales across different fictional universes and whether or not it was logically sound to base the math on a consistent value of pi. 

The next thing he knew, Alex was on his second cup of prissy tea latte and going at it hammer and tongs (or rather, spear and dual-wielding katanas) with Hank over whether Loki or Deadpool would win a theoretical faceoff.

Hank was definitely on Team Loki, between the whole science-as-godhood thing and the laws of chaos and entropy and heat death of the universe and all that nerdly shit. He also had something of a geek-crush on the snarky misunderstood genius archetype with snappy dialogue and brilliantly convoluted schemes. Alex was willing to lay good odds that there were going to be some spectacular nerdgasms in Hank's future, since some cackling mad evil genius had actually set Joss Whedon loose and aimed him at the Avengers movie.

Alex, meanwhile, was putting his money on Deadpool. Geological timescales of inevitability and immutable entropic laws of the universe were fine when you were talking hundreds of millions of years in the future, but the combination of 'won't stay dead' and 'bugfuck crazy' would fuck your shit up in the here and now, up close and extremely personal, with a side order of fries. 

Charles opined that in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't really matter who _won_ , considering that who _lost_ could likely be described as the rest of the known universe and possibly several other theoretically-plausible dimensional planes. 

Then he poured everyone more tea. 

Alex was pretty sure that drinking tea out of girly china during a full-bore nerd-herd geekout had to be abnormal by anybody's standards. _Normal_ geeks had nerdfests with either beer or vodka, and pizza was pretty much mandatory. 

But, hell, when in Rome. 

It wasn't like tea and geekery was the most abnormal thing that had happened to Alex in the past day. Or, hell, even the past hour; that went to the tea minibar, hands down. Possibly it might have been the weirdest thing in the past fifteen minutes, though.

He only realized it was dark outside when there was a quiet tap on the door.

"Oh man, I'm sorry, you had stuff you needed to do!" he yelped, looking guiltily at Charles. "Dinner and talking and--"

"Taken care of," Charles said, with one of the more smug varieties of that terrifyingly polite smile. "I assure you, Erik and I have been holding the necessary conversation."

"Oh _shit,"_ Alex groaned, when he saw who had knocked. 

"And hello to you too," Erik replied, leaning in the doorway. ...Which meant that the only avenue of escape left was straight out one of the windows.

"Sir, I did _not_ mean to land you in the doghouse. I seriously didn't. You've got to believe me, man, I'll swear on a stack of Bibles. Except wait, you're Jewish, should I swear on something else? I am _so_ sorry. If anybody's supposed to sleep on the sofa tonight it ought to be me--"

"Slow down."

Alex nodded frantically. "Right. Slowing down, sir. I'm sorry." He gulped the last of his tea and set the cup down fast. Except, wait, that was supposed to have been slow. Dammit.

Erik nodded slightly, and stalked across the room to drop into the leather armchair like the world's deadliest fashion model. He picked up Charles' clipboard, and started idly paging through it.

"Five, six, sixteen, and twenty-four," Charles said, and neither Hank nor Erik even blinked. Alex wondered how long it took them to get used to hearing half of random conversations.

"I, uh. I really am sorry, sir."

Erik tossed the clipboard onto the table.

"I'm sorry too," he replied, hands folded between his knees, holding Alex's startled gaze. "You're older than I was when I... well, never mind. Charles reminds me that we weren't typical. That teenagers shouldn't have to grow up as quickly as he and I did. So I'm sorry too."

"It's not your fault," Alex insisted. "I asked you to."

"And sometimes I shouldn't give all of our kids everything they ask for, no matter how much they say they want something." 

"Yeah, but I'm not one of your kids. Seriously, man, I'm sorry. I, um. What do I do?"

"Let's start here," Erik said, and held his hand out. 

After an embarrassingly long beat, Alex realized he was supposed to shake it. "Right! Okay!" he yelped, and grabbed Erik's hand. 

Somewhat to his surprise, Erik didn't even try to crush all his finger bones. This was getting freaky weird.

"That was nicely contusion-free, wasn't it?" Charles said brightly, back in the same brainspace with the rest of them again. "So that's one model of interpersonal conflict resolution for you. And Erik has generously agreed to demonstrate a second for us as well:: Penance neither with words nor with violence, but with the cooking of dinner."

"Whether or not intervening before you get to the stove counts as penance depends on your perspective," Erik said, flipping some more pages on the clipboard and scrawling notes. "Penance for me. Rest and relaxation for you. Salvation for some innocent steaks. Mercy for everyone's taste buds..."

Quite calmly, Charles took a velvet pillow off the sofa and swatted his husband over the head with it. Erik didn't even try to dodge.

"Model number three," Charles explained. "Also free of contusions and concussions, while generally understood to express irritated disapproval by any life form with as many functioning brain cells as your average house pet." 

"Yes, sir," Alex said, mouth twitching.

With a pointed look in his husband's direction, Charles added, "The dilemma, of course, is whether the recipient is in possession of an equivalent quantity of functioning brain cells. Do take that factor into consideration before applying this third model to--"

Erik interrupted the tirade by taking Charles' hand and kissing the back of it. 

"I love you too, darling."

"Hmph."

"There is a persistent rumor that I may be engineering a collision between the contents of a certain ceramic bowl and a vat of custard." 

" _Hmph."_

"Warm custard with nutmeg." He kissed Charles' fingertips. "Drizzled over piping hot bread pudding."

"...with currants?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of currants, due to the unfounded press speculation surrounding certain grainy photos involving unidentified fruits --" Erik's voice dropped from smoky caramel into pure sex -- " _shamelessly_ marinating in a glass of hot brandy."

Charles melted.

Hank had turned what had to be an unhealthy color of scandalized pink. 

Erik was wearing the evillest, smuggest grin ever as he lifted Charles to his feet. He kept a proud arm around the curve of what had once been Charles' waist as the poor man clung, breathless and weak-kneed, to his toothy maniac of a husband. 

Alex kind of wanted to scrub his ears with bleach. Or maybe his brain. Hell, make it both, just to be safe. He did _not_ want to know if horny pregnant people had foodgasms. Or, even worse, boozegasms.

_We do not,_ Charles informed him, greatly on his dignity. 

It probably would've been a lot more convincing without the accompanying wave of raw lust tied viscerally into the scalding-rich amber-fire memory-smell of brandy. 

_I call it epicurean sensualism. Far less vulgar._

Yeah. Totally a boozegasm.

Hank clung to the clipboard like it was a shield. 

"So. Uh. I s-signed the witness field -- pages five, six, sixteen, and twenty-four, right? So does this need, er, faxing or something?"

"Not just yet, dear," Charles said, clearly distracted by the way his husband's long fingers strayed over his belly. "I believe there was some reference made to a Care Bear press gang."

"Wait, what?" Alex asked, blinking. "I was kidding. Kind of. At least I thought I was. Huh?"

"Here." Erik plucked the clipboard out of Hank's hands, and held it out to Alex. "Happy birthday."

" _Erik."_

"Fine. I'll think of something else."

It was a pile of legal mumbo-jumbo. In really tiny print. There were a lot of party of the firsts and undersigneds and party of the seconds, and Alex was willing to lay good money that nobody involved with writing that gnarly mess had ever been to anything worth calling a party in their lives, because otherwise they would have recognized the difference.

Charles reached into his mind and overlaid color blocks and meanings, a three-dimensional tagged and labeled blowout of the dense stack of pages, and Alex thought affectionately, _Showoff._

_Guilty as charged, I'm afraid._

...He was holding _adoption_ papers. 

"You _signed_ this?" Alex asked, staring at Erik. "I mean, fuck, I'm almost seventeen, they don't make anybody foster you after you turn eighteen--"

"And adoption is for life," Charles agreed, "yes. We know." His voice choked a little. "So that you _can_ go and have horrible cardboard pizza whenever you want, and. And. Oh, God. And you _never_ need to w-wonder whether you're allowed to come h-home..."

Erik rubbed his husband's shoulder a little, softly.

... _Goddammit._ He'd gone and made Charles _cry._

Not even _Logan_ was that much of an asshole.

_Not your fault, and don't you dare think it,_ Charles said, and even his mental voice wobbled with the tears he was trying not to let spill over. _I'm -- I'm feeling rather protective of all our children, lately. You should always,_ always _know where your home is. Always. And you should always know that you are welcome._

He held out his hands in a silent plea, his eyes wet and woeful and completely heart-wrenching. 

Alex froze, looking at Erik, whom he was still privately expecting to break him for making his pregnant husband cry, when Hank put a hand between his shoulderblades and pushed. 

Startled, Alex stumbled into Charles' hug, and then tried desperately to figure out where was safe to put his hands.

Backrubs. Backrubs were probably safe. He was not touching Charles' ass for all the tea in China--

_Excuse me, what's wrong with my ass? I thought you said I wasn't fat,_ Charles teased, sniffling a little as he clung to Alex's chest, trying hard to pull himself back together.

_God, don't cry again, there's nothing wrong with your ass. You have a fantastic ass,_ Alex thought, rubbing Charles' back gingerly.

_Well. Thank you, my dear boy, you're very kind.  
_  
 _NOT that I was_ looking _or anything!_ Alex added, just in case. _You_ never _heard that, got it? Because your husband has a boathouse. And a car hook of death, and he can make more. Plus he holds a grudge like nobody's business. So I am not touching your ass with a ten foot cattle prod, thanks. But, uh, am I doing the backrub part okay?_

_Oh, yes, absolutely. Do carry on._

__Alex twisted his head to check where the coffee table was, because the last thing he needed was to trip over it and break a couple months' paycheck worth of tea set. Like he could possibly make any worse an impression on these people.

_For the love of God,_ Charles said, feeling shaky and headachy and fretful, unless maybe that was Alex himself. _You're standing in front of approximately three thousand dollars of antique bone china, and you could take it out skeet shooting and I wouldn't_ care _. You're far more important to me than any old knick-knacks. Objects are replaceable. You aren't._

Charles hugged like an octopus. One gentle hand was rubbing between his shoulderblades, another smoothing his hair, another softly patting his shoulder.

...hold it, that was too many hands. And Hank was flipping through the clipboard.

Alex stared up at Erik, who seemed to be attached to the hand that was patting his shoulder. 

"Wait up, I thought you wanted me gone?"

"That was before we had that enlightening--" he cleared his throat and gave a teasing glance at Charles-- "'conversation.'"

Still watery-eyed, Charles turned his nose up on cue and managed a half-plausible _hmph._

"The 'conversation' with me or with him? Wait, did he make you sign this?"

"No," Erik said immediately. "No. Charles would never do that. I made my own choice to change my mind." 

" _Seriously?"_

Charles tightened his hands in Alex's shirt. Alex hastily started up with the backrubs again, because it just about killed him to know he'd made _Charles_ cry and he didn't want to make it worse.

"I'm not all that sorry for hitting you, you know." Erik said. "But I _am_ sorry for making you feel unwanted. Bruises heal faster than rejection does, and dammit, I know better than that. Usually."

"Usually, yes," Charles admitted, patting his husband's chest.

"I was too caught up in fear for the family I already had. I wasn't thinking of the family you needed, or the family we could become," Erik said, holding Alex's gaze, unflinching. "I was wrong, and I'm sorry. If you'd like to hit me back, go ahead."

_"--Excuse me,"_ Charles said, glaring at them both. "I'm _standing right here."_

"He's an athlete; I'm sure he's got good aim," Erik replied, with a too-straight face.

" _Not_ the bloody _point_ , you -- you -- Hank, I need that pillow back!"

"Just a second," Hank mumbled, with his teeth full of twine. "Here." 

With a goofy grin, he handed Charles a dish scrubber with a squishy sponge tied around the head. Charles promptly hauled off and thumped his husband in the chest with it.

Something inside squawked like a dog's chew toy. Even Charles blinked.

Hank pushed up his glasses with one finger. 

"I call it the TwitHammer," he said proudly. "Without a space in the middle. ...In case you wondered."

"Oh, _marvelous._ " Charles bonked his husband again, and beamed happily at the squawk. "Well done, Hank!"

Erik and Alex traded a long look.

"You sure you're up for this?" Erik asked under his breath, with the faintest hint of a grin.

"Me? What about you? You _married_ one of them."

"True enough. Still, it's not too late for you yet."

"Excuse me, but I think I might resent that remark," Hank said, and Charles promptly handed him the TwitHammer. 

Two bonk-and-squawks later, Hank and Charles gave each other the world's nerdliest high five. Which was more a middle-five for Hank, on account of how Charles couldn't possibly have reached high enough for Hank's natural high five. All was well in the dorkiverse again.

"You do need to think about it, you know," Erik told Alex quietly. "It's your choice whether to fax that form in, or not. We've agreed that we can both accept you, and that you need a place like this. We'll work to keep you, as much as the system will allow. But in return, you have to decide whether or not you'll accept us."

"Like I'd turn this down. You think I'm fucking _crazy?"_ Alex asked, with a crooked grin.

"No, I think you're scared," Erik replied. "You'll have to work at this too. You won't be able to use that 'I'm not really part of the family' excuse any more. When things get hard, you won't be able to tell yourself you can just leave again, just like all the other times, because this _won't_ be like all the other times. How many times did you think about running away, this afternoon?"

"This was hardly a normal day," Charles said, resting his head against his husband's heart.

"We're mutants, love. There's no such thing as a normal day around this house."

"Okay," Alex said. "Got it. What do I do next?"

"First, you have dinner with us."

"No, I mean where's the machine--"

"I know," Erik said. "And _I_ mean, first, you have dinner with us. Then you sleep on it. Then, when you're calmer, on a day when you _haven't_ had your world run through a wood chipper, you'll make your call."

"There's nothing to decide. I _want_ this."

"Not quite," Charles murmured. "Right now, you're afraid not to clutch at this instantly, Alex. Which is really not the same thing at all." 

"What are you saying? Why won't you let me? You can't show me something like this and then pull it _away_ ," Alex said, his voice rising. Hank reached over and put a steadying arm around his shoulders.

"We _wouldn't_ ," Charles assured him. "No matter what you decide, Alex, we've already decided that we're willing to make you our son. We won't ever take that back. You're holding our sworn vow." 

"So let me turn it in right now!"

"Alex, dear, you should sleep at _least_ tonight first." Charles' eyes were suspiciously bright. "You need to decide whether you want the law to see you as Hank's brother for the rest of your lives, or whether you want to ask us for something different. Whether you might someday wish for the law to define your relationship with Hank more intimately than brothers."

Alex's knees buckled. Hank yelped, and caught him fast.

"That is something the two of you should discuss _after_ a good night's rest," Charles added. "In your own individual and separate beds where--"

"Oh God, stop right there, I've got the picture, stop stop _stop_ \--"

And that was coming out of _Hank's_ mouth. Of course, Alex was pretty sure he'd stopped breathing somewhere along the line.

"Right, then." Charles regathered the rest of his composure by sheer determination, and turned on that knock-you-down-and-bowl-you-over smile. 

"So for the moment we're all quite clear on the next step, yes? Shall we?"

"Shall we what?" Alex wheezed, still relearning how his lungs worked.

"Dinner, of course. The next step. If we dawdle long enough that the pudding scorches, I shall be _quite_ put out."

Alex blinked at Hank and Erik, neither of whom looked surprised. "...He's serious? Pudding _scorches_? How much brandy did you put in there?"

"Not enough to be inflammatory, I'm sure," Hank said.

Hands on his hips, Charles said, "My dear boy, this is the closest my desperately overprotective tyrant of a husband has let me come even to alcohol _fumes_ for the past eight months. Move sharp, both of you."

"I'm certain there's no harm in it, Papa," Hank hurried to reassure him. "Fumes would be about all that's left; the alcohol level itself would barely be measurable--"

"Hush." 

"No, really. A fraction of a shot of brandy absorbed by fruit, distributed through a kilogram or so of additional mass, and then divided into at least a dozen portions? It couldn't possibly cause a measurable increase in your blood alcohol--"

"Do leave a man his fantasies, Hank," Charles said, plaintive. "After today? I would so _very_ dearly love to get myself soused."

"You and me both," Alex said feelingly.

Erik eyed him sidelong, speculative... until Charles beaned him over the head with the duck-squawker.

" _No,_ the empirical testing of alcohol tolerance is _NOT_ on the list of approved male bonding experiences."

"Not 'til you can get yourself plastered along with us, you mean."

"Bloody right."

Dinner was ... well, okay, definitely not normal. But it was the kind of abnormal that Alex was almost starting to get used to. It was just the four of them, everyone else having bailed for pizza, and he had to admit the comparative quiet (even given Charles' usual level of background chatter) was a relief. 

Erik knew his way around a steak. Alex took his time chewing, just to watch Charles fidget. Still, the pudding had been safe, which meant Erik's balls were safe, which meant Alex figured he was, yeah, probably pretty safe for a while too. 

Of course, the so-called 'pudding' had nothing to do with anything resembling _pudding._ No Jello boxes or graham crackers or sliced bananas anywhere. It had gotten pulled out of the _oven._ It was kind of a quivering spotted lump of steaming ...stuff. 

And then it got glopped into bowls, and then Charles enthusiastically poured what looked like steaming egg nog all over it. _Hot egg nog._ This was just _wrong._

"Is this one of those freaky pregnancy-craving things?" Alex asked Hank under his breath, looking dubiously down at his bowl.

"I weep for the uneducated palate of this tragically deprived country," Charles said, scooping up a spoonful. 

When he put it in his mouth, the noise he made was obscene.

"I weep for my virgin ears," Alex complained. Hank was turning pink around the edges and puttering with his silverware again. Erik just smirked at them both. 

Charles took another bite, and made another sound that should have come off a porno soundtrack, licking a streak of hot drippy cream off his lips. 

Alex hid his face in both hands, peeking through his fingers in appalled fascination. "I don't think I'm old enough to watch you eat that, Mr. McCoy."

For some reason, everyone looked at Hank. Then they all looked at Alex.

"What?"

"You did catch that we'd signed those forms, didn't you?" Erik drawled, grinning.

"Like I was supposed to get _letters_ out of those swirly-slash-slash-loop things you call signatures," Alex grumbled. "Okay, so Mr. McCoy is Hank. Who are you two again?"

"We _did_ only give our first names, didn't we." Laughing, Charles reached across the table and shook Alex's hand with a flourish. "Charles Xavier, Mr. Summers. A pleasure to re-make your acquaintance, in a manner of speaking. And I hear that you've met my husband, the charming and fashionable Erik Lehnsherr--"

"You're shitting me."

"Of course he is," Erik said. "I've never been _charming_ in my life."

"Oh, pish."

"Hank," Alex said urgently. "Hank, you _didn't tell me_ your _dad_ was _Dr. Charles fucking Xavier,_ what the _actual fuck--"_

Oozing down in his chair, Hank groaned, "We _HAD_ this conversation, Alex. I didn't know where to start!"

"You've heard of me, then?" Charles looked absurdly pleased.

"People in _Washington_ quote you guys on the _news!_ " Alex howled. "There's a whole _chapter_ on _Lehnsherr v. Schmidt Laboratories_ and the civil rights bill in my mutant studies book! And I thought you were a housewife! --Husband! House _husband,_ shit, sorry! --You get my fucking point!" 

"Not that there is anything wrong with being a househusband, Alex."

"Uh. No. Right. ...Sorry." Then he turned another appalled look on Hank. "This is the Xavier Institute, isn't it? Your _little assistantship with your dad's work_ is with the _Xavier Institute research team?_ "

"Um. Not really?"

"How much not really?"

"More like helping TA his graduate-level online lectures for Columbia?" Hank pushed his glasses up with a fingertip. "I mean, the baby's due around Thanksgiving, and Papa needed someone who knew enough molecular genetics to be able to finish the semester's lectures for him, so -- yeah, I just help out with that." 

" _Just?"_ Alex repeated, twitching a little. "Is this the same insane-overachiever definition of _just_ that goes with concepts like _just eight kids?_ "

"I thought it was just a just." Hank fidgeted with his glasses again. "But, yeah, when it comes to overachievers? Father and I are going to _sit_ on Papa if he thinks he can even _try_ to go straight back to work and finish out the semester, with the final exams and the papers and the research and all of that, when he's just given birth! Tenured professors are allowed a semester of maternity leave, and he's going to be _taking_ it." 

"Yes, of course, darling." Charles patted Hank's hand with a genially indulgent smile.

"And don't you _yes-of-course-darling_ me, Papa. Father and I can sit on you in shifts. There's two of us, and that's before we recruit Aunt Raven and Uncle Logan. And when Uncle Logan sits on someone, you know you've been sat upon. Adamantium has a startlingly high molecular density. So don't even _think_ about it."

"Of course not, darling. Would I do such a thing?"

" _Yes._ "

"Well. No need to get stroppy about it, Hank." 

"Papa, I could have taught this class when I was _twelve._ You're _not_ going to push yourself to--"

\--Graduate level molecular genetics when he was _twelve_ , Jesus Christ. 

Alex pushed his plate of hot egg nog glop back far enough to thump his head against the table. 

Charles and Hank both blinked over at him, and Charles grabbed a hand towel and tried to tuck it under his forehead between thumps.

"Really, Alex. We _must_ find you some less cranially bruising coping mechanisms."

"Fuck my life," he groaned, slouching down in his chair with his face hidden in both hands.

"Done freaking out?" Erik asked, with a crooked grin.

"I don't know! Are you secretly a supermodel with spy gadgets in your shoelaces or something?" 

"Mmm. Well, he certainly has the looks for it, doesn't he?" Charles purred, running an appreciative gaze up and down his husband's lean body. "I've always told him he should talk to _Vogue_."

"You're biased, darling."

"So you're not actually a supermodel? Or a spy?"

"I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you-- ow."

"Be _nice,_ " Charles -- _Charles fucking Xavier_ \-- told his husband firmly. 

And then he reached over and patted Alex's hand with a sweetly stubborn smile. 

"Alex, dear, do at least please _taste_ the pudding. Intercultural culinary exchange. Broadening your horizons. Quite educational, I promise."

If Mrs. Lyons the mutant studies teacher asked Alex what he'd done over the weekend? And he told her Dr. Charles Xavier had fed him some spotty British stuff with hot egg nog poured on it, and he'd thought about saying no? 

She'd give him detentions for the rest of the year. 

If she believed him, of course. Actually, come to think of it, she'd probably give him detentions for the rest of year for lying about meeting Dr. Xavier. 

Or, even _more_ likely, for getting into a fist fight with _Erik Lehnsherr_. Alex had to admit it probably counted as a fist fight, even if he hadn't actually thrown a punch himself. 

Either way. Detention. For the rest of his _life._

You didn't say _no_ when one of the heroes of the mutant rights movement asked you to do something. Whether or not he also happened to be the secret ultimate ninja master of puppy eyes. 

Okay, even aside from the mutant hero thing, the puppy eyes really _were_ pretty devastating all on their own. 

Especially when Charles looked up at you through those _eyelashes. Soulfully._

"You don't _have_ to try the pudding, of course," he said. The guilty fidgeting with the corner of his napkin was just overkill. "I would never want to force you into anything. And I would be happy to write a note for your teacher, if you think it would be of any help. --Blast it all, this is why I _detest_ notoriety..."

"No, no, it's okay, you don't have to write anything, _please_ don't write anything, Mrs. Lyons will freak, and then I'd have to _explain,_ and even Hank the supergenius doesn't know how to explain so I'd be completely fucked, and just -- no," Alex stammered. 

Seriously, it was getting to the point where just eating the damn stuff _had_ to be less traumatic than the horrible alternatives. Probably. Maybe. The spots were kind of ...urgh. The last time he'd encountered something that looked like little black flecks of poo, he'd been cleaning out the mouse cages in Biology, and... yeah that trainwreck of thought was just not helping.

Alex scooped some up, screwed his eyes shut, and shoved it in his mouth.

Yep. Still definitely not pudding. Still freaky weird when he tried to think that the stuff in his mouth was supposed to be pudding. 

If he thought of it like it was supposed to be French toast with hot ice cream sauce, though... 

Okay yeah, _still_ weird. But ...kind of tasty.

He could _feel_ Charles' happiness wafting across the table like a high-power sunbeam, and squirmed in embarrassment. 

Sure, the stuff wasn't _bad,_ but Alex was _not_ going to sit there making foodgasm noises with _Dr. Charles Xavier._

"Honestly, Alex. I was _not_ making foodgasm noises," Charles huffed.

Hank choked on his not-pudding. 

"I _wasn't._ "

"You have no idea how you sound, schatzi." 

Oh God, that was Erik Lehnsherr's sex voice. Even worse, that was _Hank's dad's sex voice._ Alex didn't want to hear Hank's dad's sex voice _ever again._ Scratch that, Alex didn't want to hear it _at all_.

Hank seemed to be similarly traumatized; he shot to his feet like someone had lit his chair on fire, and started picking up everything that wasn't Charles' jealously-guarded bowl of not-pudding and not-egg-nog.

"Dishes," Hank said desperately. "I'll wash the dishes. You take the pudding somewhere and, er, eat it. Somewhere else. Somewhere that, uh, isn't _right here,_ and. Yes. Dishes. Dishes are loud. Where there shouldn't be, um. Other noises. --Could you help me out here, Alex?"

"Absolutely," Alex said, deciding then and there that Hank was his new hero, trying hard to ignore what his peripheral vision was telling him about Charles' pink cheeks and Erik's _grin_.

About half an hour of scrubbing and clattering and loud radio music later, Hank estimated it ought to be safe for their ears (and their sanity) if they ventured out of the kitchen. Cautiously, he led Alex back through the maze to the TV room, and they both peered in.

Two heads over the sofa, a gentle murmur, Charles' irrepressible giggles, that had been a _kiss,_ yep, time to get the hell back out of Dodge--

"Honestly, boys, we _are_ decent," Charles called. "Besides, Hank, if you wouldn't mind, I need you to look over my lecture notes for tonight." 

He patted the free sofa cushion beside himself, so Hank slunk in and dutifully folded himself down at his papa's side.

Well, damn. Charles was far and away the snuggliest of the three of them, and now both of his sides were already claimed. That left Alex with a horrible dilemma. 

Snuggle in next to his boyfriend and watch Hank blush himself to death while trying to dodge the lazer glare of burning hate from PredatorDad? Or else snuggle in next to _PredatorDad,_ which dear God _NO_. Or else wuss out and sit somewhere clear across the room. 

Across the room was looking awfully tempting.

_PredatorDad is far more snuggly than he likes to admit,_ Charles said, all glittering pixie twinkles of merciless bright-eyed doom. 

_You get a special kick out of traumatizing my brain, don't you,_ Alex said. It was the only thing that made this day make any kind of sense at all.

_Nonsense; I am equally fond of traumatizing everybody's brains. I am an equal opportunity purveyor of tea and mental scarring._

_And octopus hugs,_ Alex pointed out _. Don't forget the octopus hugs._

_And addictive substances which can be persuaded to masquerade under the name of pudding. I'm afraid the latter is the least frequently-called-upon of my dastardly skills, however. Perhaps I should update my business cards._

_Yeah, you should. You have to warn people, dude. Otherwise it's like the Spanish Inquisition._

_You know Monty Python! My dear, darling boy, I_ knew _we needed to keep you._

Actually, he only knew that quote through Hank. ...And he was pretty sure he hadn't thought that quietly enough.

_Well, then obviously we need to keep you in order to further your education in the classics._

Charles was giving off little sparkly sunbeams of happiness again. Alex couldn't help squirming a little, because it tickled, and he couldn't exactly itch his own brain.

_Do come and sit with us, please? I want you to feel at ease here, Alex. I want you to feel at home._

"Am I scaring off Hank's fluffy kitten?" Erik asked, with a lazy grin. "Sometimes it takes a while to house-train the wild ones." In a syrupy voice, he added, "Does snookums know how to use the litterbox like a good little kitty?"

Okay, that was just plain _uncalled for._

Alex stalked across the room, dropped his ass onto the couch next to PredatorDad, and shoved himself into the crook of his elbow. 

...And then tried like hell _not_ to think how many teeth were way too close to his face.

Hank took off his glasses, polished them on the hem of his shirt, put them on, and blinked several times, apparently trying to sanity-check his visual feed. 

Charles was beaming from ear to ear, the sap.

Alex sat dead still, trying his damnedest not to breathe too hard or flinch or do anything that might set off any predatorial kill-first-chew-later reflexes. 

...but like hell was he going to back off, either. He knew himself too well.

Some days, Alex wondered dismally what it might have been like to be smart.

Erik's hand shifted behind him, and Alex _refused_ to let himself flinch. Fingers behind his ears. Okay, he could deal with ear-twisting and neck pinches--

Fingers behind his ears, _scratching._

"Settle down, kitty," Erik murmured, ruffling fingertips absently through Alex's hair. "I don't bite."

"Well. Not without invitation," Charles pointed out with an insinuating arch of that one damn eyebrow, licking his lips like the fallen angel of TMI.

"Oh God, I didn't need to know that, okay?" Hank moaned. "I just didn't. New topic _please._ "

"Yeah," Alex agreed, feeling kind of green. "Definitely new topic. Uh. Can I ask something?"

"Of course you can, dear." 

He couldn't let himself _squirm_ around PredatorDad. Looking like wounded prey was never a good idea when something with that many teeth was right next to your jugular vein. And maybe he ought to get ready to run, just in case--

"Erik is _NOT going to hurt you,"_ Charles said firmly, giving them both the Significant Glare. "No matter _what_ you ask. In fact, Hank, where is that fantastic TwitHammer of yours?"

"Okay! Okay, I got it." Alex gulped, and tried to get his knees under himself as much as he could manage anyway. "I was wondering if... um... would you make me a bigger copy of one of your pictures on the wall?"

Charles absolutely melted. 

"Oh, _Alex._ Of course. Why wouldn't we?" 

"I didn't know if you'd mind. The one I want's kind of ...personal."

Charles reached over and twined his fingers through Alex's, and laughed a bit self-consciously. 

"Please, please tell me it's not the twins' birthday. Hank was just adorable in that lab coat, I know, but it was hardly my own finest hour."

"Not that kind of personal," Alex said. "I mean the one where you're dressed up like Santa, with all the kids, and. Uh." The snerk was getting away from him. "You know. _That_ reindeer." 

Erik's hand froze dead still against the back of his neck.

Charles put a hand over his mouth, but his eyes were letting all the laughter out anyway. 

"Ah, yes, _that_ one. Quite fond of it myself." A little half-strangled giggle escaped. "Marvelous likeness of my darling ...sister. I meant sister."

Alex's heartbeat pounded really loud in his ears. 

Erik's hand wasn't moving. 

Okay, but that meant Erik's hand wasn't _moving,_ either.

A few pulses later, Alex figured he probably was going to stay alive and unbusted after all. 

Relief made him stupid. Well, stupid _er_. He was totally luxuriating in the feeling of the smug, smug grin stretching across his face.

"I'm sure it will make a lovely portrait on the boathouse wall," Erik said, between his teeth.

Still breathing. Wow. Breathing was kind of a rush.

"I'm quaking in my boots," Alex tossed back. "Only, y'know, _not._ "

"Yes, I noticed," Erik replied dry as ice. And then his hand moved again, behind Alex's ears, _gently,_ scritch-scritch-scritch: "Good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's notes:  
> The tea set in Charles' study: [Lenox' Westchester pattern.](http://tinyurl.com/74gfn2l) In production since 1915 and in use at the White House through several presidencies. A new four-person tea set would cost $3,080 before sales tax and before the antique premium, though 'sales' could be had for approximately $2,250.
> 
> Of course, if they'd gone into the reading room -- Alex cuts in with "how can you tell the difference? It looks just like the other one!" And Charles says, "The woodwork is cherry rather than mahogany, of course." 
> 
> So if they'd gone into the reading room, then they'd have found this tea set instead: [Noritake's Xavier Gold,](http://tinyurl.com/7mp4bsn%20) which would have been a comparative bargain at a bit over $1,000 for a tea set for four.
> 
> One of the latest-published Avengers titles Charles would have had time to read before the twins' birth in winter 6 years earlier is one in which Wanda and Pietro Maximoff get introduced to the Avengers. I couldn't resist the Rule of Funny.
> 
> And yep, I really was planning the "Alex didn't know their surnames" bit from the beginning of the first section, where Charles gave his first name and nothing else :3 Raven's Erik-teasing Christmas photo was a surprise when it came up, but poor Alex needs some kind of weaponry to defend himself with!
> 
> So that's the end of this fic thread. But I've got several more fic ideas noodling around in the same universe, so this isn't all for the series. I just have to find time to finish writing them down! @__@ Two more are already postable and coming soon, and hopefully something else will get wrapped up before I run out of vacation.


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